



Book 



faps^hf F l^l*) 



COPWilGHT DEPO&m 



THE 

MODERN HOUSEHOLD 



By 

Marion Talbot 

and 

SoPHONisBA Preston Breckinridge 



REVISED EDITION 




WHITCOMB & BARROWS 
BOSTON, 1919 



ml 



COPYRIGHT, 191a AND 1919 

By MARION TALBOT 

and 

SOPHONISBA P. BRECKINRIDGE 



THOMAS TODD CO., PRINTERS 
14 Beacon Sfret, Boston, Mass 

OEC 12IJ1B 
©J.A53fi!)48 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Household as a Social Unit i 

II. The Household as the Centre of Consump- 
tion 10 

III. Shelter 20 

IV. Food 29 

\\ Clothing 37 

VI. Management 47 

VII. Domestic Service 5^ 

VIII. Education 67 

IX. The Activities of the Household 74 

X. The Household and THE Community 82 

Index 9^ 



PREFACE 

We hope that the statements and suggestions in the 
following pages, supplemented with the questions, will 
lead housewives, either separately or in study classes, 
and students of social conditions in college and elsewhere, 
to find ways by which the household of moderate income 
and with children may realize its possibilities as an 
organized group of human beings. In these days, the 
constructive forces necessary for the maintenance of 
the household must be sought in new garbs, and those 
forces which seem to be disintegrating must be rein- 
terpreted in order to serve their higher purposes. No 
attempt has been made to treat the subjects presented 
in an exhaustive way or to do more than to indicate the 
wide range of interests which are the field in which 
the progressive housekeeper may serve and enjoy. 

Marion Talbot 
S. P. Breckinridge 
Department of Household 

Administration 

The University of Chicago 

June, 19 1 2 



PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION 

During the ye'ars since the following analysis was 
published, there has accumulated a mass of testimony to 
the correctness of our statements. The war has served 
to emphasize the ''wide range of interests which are the 
field in which the progressive housekeeper may serve." 
In the following edition, the several sets of questions and 
the bibliographies have been revised and made applicable 
to recent developments. But except so far as the authority 
of the Government has been substituted for the free 
choice of the Housekeeper, and to that extent her prob- 
lems have been simplified, the statements contained in 
the following chapters seem still important. Among the 
serious problems to be faced, now that the war is ended, 
is that of determining the true sphere of service to the 
modern community of the modern household. 

Marion Talbot 
SoPHONisBA P. Breckinridge 
The University of Chicago 
August I ^^ I pip 



CHAPTER I 
THE HOUSEHOLD AS A SOCIAL UNIT 

THERE are students of modern social conditions 
who prophesy that the home and the family will 
not endure in their present form as social organizations. 
Moreover, these views have secured a considerable fol- 
lowing, and they have obtained a greater publicity than 
they really merit. 

The prevalence of these views doubtless seems greater 
than it is, partly because newspaper and magazine writers 
have widely quoted them and thus given them the sem- 
blance of more widespread authority than they actually 
possess, and partly because they reflect a general and 
very genuine dissatisfaction with many social phenomena 
apparent at the present time. Such evidence is found 
in the increasing frequency of divorce, the lowered 
birthrate, the multiplication of hotels and tenements, the 
increase of public places of amusement, and the deser- 
tion of families, either temporarily or permanently, by 
husbands and fathers. 

On the other hand, it is true that the dependence of 
the community upon sound family life as the condition 
of enduring community life is becoming constantly more 
widely recognized and more frankly acknowledged by 
persons of large experience in actual dealing with social 
problems. Those who work among the poor with any 
appreciation of their responsibility for the consequences 
of their ministry have long been familiar with the fact 

I 



2 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

that to attempt to serve any member of the family with- 
out taking- into account the needs of the entire group is 
generally like pouring water into a sieve. The Charity 
Organization movement, with its program of "family 
rehabilitation," is a conspicuous instance of this emphasis 
upon the family as the ultimate social unit. Another is 
the Juvenile Court movement, with its theory that inade- 
quate family care amounts to dependency and justifies 
community interference in behalf of a child, whose 
claim to normal family life is thus recognized. Alore- 
over, the discussion of the treatment of dependent chil- 
dren, whether by means of pensions so that they may 
be cared for in their own homes, or after the "placing 
out" method whereby they are given homelike surround- 
ings with foster parents, has made the necessity of 
domestic efficiency on the part of the mother very clear 
so far as the poor are concerned. 

In the case of those who suffer from spiritual rather 
than from pecuniary limitations, the theory has not been so 
clearly formulated ; but the importance of setting higher 
standards of domestic, social, and administrative efficiency 
for women who administer incomes ranging from two 
to ten thousand dollars is becoming constantly more evi- 
dent. In the first place, these women are the ones who 
suffer more than any others from the influences which 
issue from a leisure class based on recently acquired 
wealth. These are the women whose incomes are most 
largely drawn from positions of a business rather than 
of an industrial character, among whom the canons of 
waste and idleness secure their widest adherence. To be 
sure, tlie college graduates belong largely to this group, 



AS A SOCIAL UNIT 3 

as do most of the professional women. They are, how- 
ever, as yet, the exception and not the rule, and, to the 
domestic women of this pecmiiary group, subject to all 
the pressure of the competitive and wasteful business 
standards of today, is intrusted the administration of the 
households from which will come the young people who 
will be able to take high school and college courses, and 
so constitute the leadership in political, professional, 
and business life. It is, therefore, of supreme importance 
that for women of that group the dignity and responsi- 
bility of their tasks should be made clear, and ideals of 
efficiency and utility substituted for those of waste and 
social competition. If this can be done successfully, 
there will be less misapprehension as to the seriousness 
of the domestic problem. 

It is not surprising that great confusion of judgment 
regarding the subject has prevailed. Household tasks of 
outgrown value are retained because of their association 
with the real service to family life which was rendered 
by them at an earlier period. Archaic methods persist, 
practices no longer in accord wdth the demands of the 
time survive, and belated eighteenth or nineteenth century 
habits of thought often dominate the household life of 
the group, when twentieth century business or educa- 
tional ideals are being applied to problems presented to 
the members of the group in their experiences outside the 
home. The inevitable result must be serious difficulty for 
the young woman who undertakes as wife and mother 
to direct the affairs of her family, as well as friction 
among the members of the group. The development of 
the factory system and the application of its principles 



V 



J 



V 



4 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

to many processes connected with the preparation of 
foods and the manufacture of clothing have prevented 
her acquisition of the various kinds of skill which her 
mother or her grandmother acquired as a matter of 
course. She cannot spin, weave, card, comb, bake, or 
brew. She can perhaps sew a little; she can cook but 
little, and then successfully only if she refrains from 
"stirring in judgment" and obeys the cookbook literally. 
Apparently, then, her status has been reduced, her influ- 
ence narrowed, and her position rendered less dignified 
and worthy. Moreover, much of the work which the 
domestic woman once did in the home, the wage-paid 
woman now does outside the home. Wage-earning is 
coming to have equal dignity with domestic life, and the 
wage-paid woman, while perhaps industrially bond, is 
domestically free. 

Yet it is, of course, obvious lo the intelligent observer 
that never was the position of the housekeeper and home- 
maker in reality more important or her responsibility 
greater. The tragedy does not lie in the small scope 
offered for the use of her abilities, but in her lack of 
preparation to avail herself of her opportunity. For 
without warning a far more serious change has taken 
place than has been realized. The domestic tasks of an 
earlier day have left the home, not leaving behind them 
a void, but making way for a substitute which has crept 
in, calling little attention to itself and therefore unnoticed 
and unwelcomed. This substitute for the older making 
— of yarn, cloth, bread, and beer — is spending money 
for ready-made clothing, household goods, and food 
almost ready to be served. By her making, the house- 



AS A SOCIAL UNIT 5 

keeper of two generations ago provided for the wants 
of the aged, the children, and the other adults in her 
little group. If she planned wisely and executed well, 
Johnny had trousers that were warm, durable, and com- 
fortable, Jenny's little dress looked, wore, and felt well, 
and the husband's homemade shirt lasted until a suc- 
cessor was ready. Today, by her spending, • she, with 
others like her, determines the fate of innumerable child- 
workers, whose labor, performed perhaps at night, is 
embodied in the sheets in which her Johnny and Jenny 
sleep, the table linen from which the husband eats, or 
the bottles from which the aged parent takes the reliev- 
ing medicines. By her buying, employers are tempted to 
continue the use of sweated labor on the curtains which 
hang in reception rooms like hers, and convict labor is 
enabled to compete with the union workingman, whose 
efforts to improve his conditions are thus rendered futile. 
Surely the position of one who holds such power, 
though only as she shares it with others who are under- 
taking a like task, is one of great influence, real dignity, 
and grave responsibility. And yet it is and must for some 
time be extremely difficult to equip young women to 
perform these duties and meet these responsibilities ade- 
quately. As has been said, the vacating of the household 
by the various industries to which reference has been 
made has sometimes seemed unduly slow, but compared 
with the long period during which they have been so 
associated with home life as to seem to be identical with 
home life, this egress has been accomplished with extraor- 
dinary swiftness. Within less than a century, the age- 
long practice of making in anticipation of a want already 



6 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

experienced has been replaced by buying an article made, 
not primarily to be used, but to be sold, often for a want 
not yet felt. The goods that were the products of the 
labor of separate small family groups are now the prod- 
ucts of big business. Through the act of purchase, the 
housekeeper becomes related to those who buy and sell, 
who plan and toil and exploit, the wide world over. To 
meet such a situation, no preparation has been possible, 
because no such situation could be anticipated. It is, 
therefore, not difficult to understand why we still teach 
a little cooking and a little sewing, and so continue to 
relate ourselves with the long past of making, instead 
of formulating and inculcating the principles of spending 
which belongs only to today and yesterday. For the past, 
explanations may suffice and apologies be accepted. For 
the future, however, no excuse can be offered. We know 
today that the newly assumed function of spending is as 
important as the old function of making. We know that 
those who spend determine the fate of those who make. 
W^e know that those who make and those who profit and 
those who spend are held by bonds of common interest, 
and we know that to those to whom so much is intrusted 
must be given wisdom, skill, technique, and intelligence 
with reference to the hard task to which they set their 
hands. 

Not only, then, are we beginning to recognize the 
significance of the spending function, but new measures 
are being worked out by which the importance of the 
efficient performance of the household task is estimated 
in terms of social well-being. In the child-study depart- 
ment of the Chicago Board of Education, the children 



AS A SOCIAL UNIT 7 

who are brought before the Juvenile Court as truant, 
incorrigible, or delinquent are tested in ingenious ways 
to learn, if possible, the real source of their difficulty. It 
is the belief of the wise persons who observe these chil- 
dren in this close, scientific manner that in many cases 
their troubles grow, not out of natural inferiority, either 
mental or moral, but out of a lack of opportunity during 
the early days and weeks of their lives to form regular 
habits, to learn to coordinate well their bodily activities, 
and to cooperate and work naturally with other members 
of the group. In other words, the failure to secure regu- 
lar sleep, regular feeding, and regular play for the child 
at first, and then the loss of regular family life, and espe- 
cially the family meal, at which his needs receive due 
recognition as part of a group expression of a group 
need, and the lack of such discipline as the well-ordered 
home may furnish, lead the children into the humiliating 
paths which may end in the truant and reform school; 
and even if the failure is not so conspicuous, the result 
may still be that the child will be prevented from coming 
into his kingdom of full individual development and full 
social participation. The casual observer may propose 
the substitution of the well-ordered institution for the 
task of securing such regularity and discipline in the 
every-day household. But the mortality tables of institu- 
tions for children forbid the consideration of such sub- 
stitutions. If they do not receive in the home the kind 
of training that they should receive, they may become 
truant or delinquent; but if they receive institutional 
rather than maternal care, they die; and the risk is too 
great. 



8 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

Because, then, of the significance of her task to the 
later Hfe of the members of her group, and because, too, 
of her power to determine the fate of those workers from 
whose services she benefits either directly or indirectly, 
the woman who administers the affairs of a household 
may well regard herself as placed at the real heart of 
things, responsible for the conduct of that institution 
which is the unit of social organization. 

Questions 

1. What are the factors which go to make up sound 
family life? 

2. In what respects, if any, may there be said to 
have occurred a decadence in home life ? 

3. What features of the present form of family life 
are the object of criticism? 

4. In case you think any of this criticism valid, what 
remedies would you propose? 

5. What archaic methods and belated practices are 
retained in your household ? 

6. Name some competitive and wasteful business 
standards. 

7. What measures is your community taking to pre- 
serve family life? 

Bibliography 
The Family. Helen Bosanquet. New York: The Mac- 

millan Co. 
The Family as a Social and Educational Institution. 

W. Goodsell. New York : The Macmillan Co. 
The Family. E. C. Parsons. New York : Putnam's Sons. 
Woman and Economics. Charlotte P. Oilman. Boston: 

Small, Maynard & Co. 



AS A SOCIAL UNIT 9 

The Normal Life. E. T. Devine. New York: Survey 
Associates. 

The Ethics of the Family. J. H. Tufts. National Con- 
ference of Charities and Correction. 19 15. 

Rich and Poor. Helen Bosanquet. New York : The Mac- 
millan Co. 

The Standard of Life. Helen Bosanquet. New York: 
The Macmillan Co. 

Durable Monogamous Wedlock. J. E. Cutler. American 
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 22, p. 226. 

Social Diagnosis. Mary E. Richmond. New York: 
Russell Sage Foundation. 

Domestic Service, Chapter L Lucy M. Salmon. New 
York : The Macmillan Co. 

Some Ethical Gains through Legislation. Florence Kelley. 
New York : The Macmillan Co. 

Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners 
in the United States, Volume L "Cotton Textile 
Industry," Chapter L United States Bureau of 
Labor, Washington, D. C, 19 10. 

Handbook of Information for Home Service Sections 
No. 207. American Red Cross, Washington, D. C. 

U. S. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau Publica- 
tion No. 28. 

Note. — The books referred to are expected to be 
suggestive rather than to give specific and detailed 
answers to the questions, and the lists have been made 
with special reference to students who have access to 
reference libraries. 



CHAPTER II 

THE HOUSEHOLD AS THE CENTRE OF 
CONSUMPTION 

THE household has lost its social value as the pro- 
ductive unit ; it remains, however, the centre of 
consumption. That the father should earn and the mother 
spend the family income is the allotment of function 
generally agreed upon. There are, of course, variations 
of this program. There are well-to-do households in 
which the father not only earns the support but pays 
the large items in the expense account, such as rent and 
other amounts which are periodically due. There are 
other households in which the wife is physically disabled 
or indifferent, and the father makes the daily purchases. 
In other families, too, in which the mother is interested 
in a professional pursuit, scholarship, the law, journal- 
ism, or teaching — conspicuous examples could be cited 
of each — the direction of the household may be jointly 
assumed as suits the professional convenience of either 
or both. There are communities of considerable extent 
— the great textile centres, mill towns in England and 
Scotland, and certain factory towns in New England — 
where the mother regularly contributes by her labor to 
the family income. The sum of these exceptional family 
groups is absolutely large ; relatively, however, it is small 
enough to justify characterizing them as "exceptional." 
How^ever many may be the cases of the women who earn 
or however questionable the desirability of their becom- 

lO 



AS THE CENTRE OF CONSUMPTION II 

ing wage-paid workers, it is universally accepted as suit- 
able that the women of the household should spend. 
Among large numbers of the community it is, in fact, 
the practice for husband and wage-earning children to 
turn in to the wife and mother their entire pay, to receive 
back for personal and separate use the amount her judg- 
ment allows, on the basis of knowing and planning for 
the needs of the entire group. 

It has been pointed out that in the past slight atten- 
tion has been paid to this function of the housewife, 
because in the past, when the home was the centre of 
production, the interest was focused upon the technical 
processes involved rather than upon the wise allotment 
of various goods to various wants. Moreover, where the 
great volume of vv^ants are satisfied by making goods 
rather than by purchasing them, the latter seems rela- 
tively less important. In this country, too, nature has 
been so bountiful and the access to the means of produc- 
tion on the whole so free that penalties for unwise use 
of resources have been lacking, and there has therefore 
been relatively slight inducement to improve the tech- 
nique of consumption. 

The same wasteful methods have prevailed in pro- 
duction for the market. Only as the struggle for life 
grows keener and access to the means of production 
more difficult, as land is appropriated and capital is 
organized, as the growth of cities and improved means 
of communication reveal to all members of the commu- 
nity the struggle necessary for many, has the producer 
for the market on the one hand and the housewife direct- 
ing the consumption of her family on the other begun 



12 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

to take notice of the deplorable waste which has char- 
acterized the activities of both. On this account much 
is said and written as to the desirability of cost-account- 
ing in the factory and office. In the same way the need 
is voiced for the housewife to learn to plan more care- 
fully and to enter upon each year's activities prepared to 
benefit from the experience, failures, mistakes, victories, 
and successes of previous years. 

This means a system of cost-accounting carefully 
worked out so as to reduce the labor of keeping it to 
the lowest point consistent with its intelligent use in com- 
paring the results of methods used and of experiments 
tried. It also means careful and deliberate planning, the 
preparation of a budget in which the wants of the group 
are recognized and allowance is made for the fullest 
satisfaction of each want consistent with the adequate 
recognition of the others. It means, of course, a standard 
of living adopted on the basis of careful thought as to 
the pecuniary resources available for the group, the 
probable changes in the earning capacity of the man, the 
social claims upon the group, and the domestic and social 
capacities of the woman. 

The first consideration in determining the amount to 
be spent, after taking account of the maximum fixed by 
the total income from all sources — the earnings of the 
husband, income from invested securities owned by both 
husband and wife, earnings of the children, etc. — and 
the minimum set by the actual cost of the shelter, food, 
and clothing consistent with health and decency, would 
be the allotment of resources as between present and 
future wants. When there are children, the cost of edu- 



AS THE CENTRE OF CONSUMPTION I3 

cation must be anticipated as relatively greater when they 
reach the adolescent period. The claims of the man's 
business may require sudden change in domicile or 
make a more costly method of living seem advantageous. 
Inherited tendencies of a physical kind may make it seem 
wise to lay aside a considerable proportion of the current 
income against the time of illness and incapacity. On 
the other hand, generous nourishment for man and child 
alike, or apparently extravagant expenditures in educa- 
tion or recreation, may ward off the dreaded invalidism 
or bring in relatively larger returns in increased earning 
capacity in later years. 

These considerations and others like them should 
weigh with the young housewife to whom the husband 
intrusts the responsibility of planning their joint domestic 
undertaking. Not only should she consider seriously the 
claims of the present and of the future; she should 
have a pretty clear idea of the wants other than physical 
which will demand satisfaction and avenge themselves 
if ignored. She will, of course, recognize the fact that 
food adequate in amount and well selected, shelter 
wholesome, decent, and if possible beautiful, and cloth- 
ing of the kind to meet the needs of warmth, freedom 
of motion, tastefulness, and rational conformity to pre- 
vailing styles must be supplied. She will, in addition, 
allow for the schooling of the children and provide the 
opportunity for the entire group, by means of daily news- 
papers, the weekly and monthly magazines, and the 
purchase of books, to indulge to a reasonable extent 
the desire to know what is going on in the world about 
and what the past has meant. If she is wise, she will 



14 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

allow for such social intercourse as will give her group 
a sense of close relationship with other groups; for 
recreation which brings relaxation and gives free play 
to individual and original powers; for such service of 
the poor and needy as cultivates the spirit of service and 
gives a sense of unity with the whole wide world; and 
for such enjoyment and appreciation of beauty as unites 
the individual harmoniously with tlie universe. 

Her first plan must be tentative, and on the whole 
experimentally tried out. No very definite instruction can 
be given as to the proportion of income to be assigned 
to the various activities of the family. This is not because 
the subject has not received attention. Various plans 
have been proposed for formulating proper standards of 
family life. Le Play, the French student of family Hfe, 
spent many years observing the customs of family groups 
in many parts of the world, in order that the possibilities 
of controlling one's environment and the extent to which 
the environment is determining might be better under- 
stood. On the basis of extensive and elaborate compu- 
tation, Ernst Engel undertook to deduce certain ''laws 
of expenditure" which indicate within wide limits the 
relationships between total income and the proportion 
allotted to any special wants. These "laws" are usually 
formulated as follows: 

1. The lower the income the larger the proportion 
claimed by sustenance. 

2. Lodging, warming, and lighting absorb an invari- 
able proportion, whatever the income. 

3. Clothing claims a constant proportion. 



AS THE CENTRE OF CONSUMPTION I5 

4. The larger the income the greater the proportion 
allotted to well-being. 

These studies were limited, however, to families on 
a low pecuniary level. The conclusions, therefore, have 
no weight as indicating what is desirable. They merely 
summarize the practice of those who have lived under the 
pressure of poverty, and indicate in statistical form 
the truism that so long as a family is in the grasp of 
severe poverty, food will claim a disproportionate share 
of the slender resources. If as the income increases the 
proportions allotted to housing and clothes remain con- 
stant, it is because with housing and clothing are asso- 
ciated satisfactions of varied kinds, social intercourse, 
beauty, display, which demand satisfaction. 

It is to be hoped that true bases of expenditure may 
some day be formulated; but that will be possible only 
when more intelligence has been devoted to the house- 
hold problem. When housekeepers, trained in the tech- 
nique of spending, wise as to the nature of the interests 
intrusted to their care, become interested enough to keep 
careful accounts, to make experiments which require 
patience and devotion, and to report the results for the 
benefit of others engaged in similar undertakings, a body 
of data will become available from which conclusions as 
to desired standards of living may be drawn. 

Obviously, however, the intelligent young house- 
keeper will even now familiarize herself w4th the sug- 
gestions contained in such studies as those referred to, in 
order that she may obtain the help which they may afford 
in determining when and how to meet peculiar needs for 
which special provision must be made. For example, if 



1 6 TPIE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

shelter, heat, and Hght assume a fairly constant propor- 
tion, and that somewhere near one fifth, and she finds 
that her expenditures conform pretty closely to that 
measure, she may feel fairly well satisfied, unless she 
should argue that during the first few years of married 
life, when social demands are few, while her children are 
little, she will reduce this item to an even lower claim 
by doing without a sitting room and guest room, or by 
some other limitation in housing, in order that there 
may be large freedom later on when the husband is able 
to be at home more and the children demand more space 
and more entertaining. 

In such a spirit of foresight and regard for values 
will she distribute all her resources — her money income, 
her own time and strength, and the time and strength 
of those whose service she commands. Especially in- 
teresting questions arise in connection with processes 
formerly closely related to family life, now ready to 
sever connection with it. \\^eaving and spinning have 
gone. Should sewing go? Will she make the little gar- 
ments for the first baby, or buy them already made and 
save her eyesight and nervous force ? Brewing was once 
a household process. Shall baking go? Will she make 
or buy her family's supply of jams and other sweet things 
for the winter's enjoyment? If she lives in a community 
where there is no wage-paid work for women which 
might attract her for a time; if the bakers of her town 
make poor bread under conditions of which she cannot 
approve: if the children need home baking because in 
their community domestic science has not been put in the 
school curriculum and thev need to be tausfht to use their 



AS THE CENTRE OF CONSUMPTION 1/ 

hands — under any of these circumstances she may well 
decide to cling to the earlier practice. And so with many 
other decisions. Perhaps her task cannot be better de- 
scribed than by saying that she will allot the various 
units of her resources so that she will get out of every 
one at least as much satisfaction as if it had been allotted 
to any other use. 

With such a guiding principle, with the self-control 
and patience necessary to keep careful accounts and com- 
pare the results of the experiments as the years go by, ^/ 
and with the cooperation of the husband in encouraging 
such experimentation, the management of the group 
would become and remain a problem of increasing interest 
and dignity. 

Questions 

1. What is meant by the home as a ''place of con- 
sumption"? 

2. For what needs must the income of a family 
provide ? 

3. Why has little attention been paid to the division 
of income? 

4. What considerations other than those of pecuniary 
and industrial economy should help determine the method 
of living? 

5. What tests can be applied to determine whether 
the family income is expended in the most satisfactory 
way? 

6. What constitutes good buying? 

7. Describe five observed instances of good or bad 
buying. 

8. What is meant bv "sfood standards of living"? 



l8 THK MODERN IIOUSKHOLD 

9. Under what conditions do you think a housekeeper 
is justified in taking up gainful employment? 

10. How can greater simplicity in living be secured ? 

11. Make a list of the industries which have in general 
disappeared from the city household. 

12. Make a list of those which have partially dis- 
appeared. 

13. Make a list of those which you think may dis- 
appear with advantage to family life. 

14. Make a list of interests and occupations of the 
housekeeper which do or may replace the lost ones. 

15. What measures for the control of spending have 
recently been adopted in your neighborhood ? 



Bibliography 

Economic Function of Woman. E. T. Devine. New 
York: Teachers College, Columbia University. 

The Woman Who Spends. B. J. Richardson. Boston : 
Whitcomb & Barrows. 

The Cost of Living as Modified by Sanitary Science. 
Chapter IX, "Organization of the Household." 
E. H. Richards. New York: J. Wiley & Sons. 

General Sociology. Chapter XXXI, "Interests"; Chap- 
ter XXXII, "The Individual." A. W. Small. Chi- 
cago : The University of Chicago Press. 

The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families 
in New York City. R. C. Chapin. New York: 
Charities Publication Committee. Also review in 
Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 17, p. 541. 



AS THE CENTRE OF CONSUMPTION I9 

Home Problems. Caroline L. Hunt. Boston : Whitcomb 
& Barrows. 

American Economic Review. II, 269. "The Backward 
Art of Spending Money." W. C. Mitchell. 

Household Manufactures in the United States. R. M. 
Tryon. Chicago : University of Chicago Press. 

Manual of Household Accounts. J. C. and M. F. Cran- 
dell. Boston : Whitcomb & Barrows. 

Household Accounting. W. A. Sheaffer. New York: 
The Macmillan Co. 

The Business of the Household. C. W. Taber. Phila- 
delphia : J. B. Lippincott Co. 



CHAPTER III 
SHELTER 

'T'^HERE are three terms which are often confused 
•*• in popular usage, viz., housing, housekeeping, and 
home-making. Each one has a distinct meaning, and yet 
they all go together to make up one whole, and that a 
very important concern of the housewife. We may use 
as an analogy the human body. There is first its struc- 
ture or its anatomy, then its physical activities or its 
physiology, and finally its spiritual life or its soul. 
Housing is the material form which shelter takes ; house- 
keeping is the direction or maintenance of the physical 
aspects of the house, while home-making is the crown 
of all, the nurture and development of that spirit which 
finds expression in the popular phrase, "There's no place 
like home." 

Much of the so-called ''bad housing," when closely 
scrutinized, proves to be bad housekeeping and bad home- 
making. Changes in housing laws will not better these 
conditions. There must be education for housekeeping. 
But more important still for right living and the wel- 
fare of society is education for home-making. This 
means the education of husbands and fathers as well as 
of wives and mothers. Little can be accomplished for 
the betterment of the home until this fact is recognized 
by public opinion and the significance of the home — 
not of its processes merely — is recognized equally by 
men and women. 



SHELTER 21 

As the civilization of our time grows more complex, 
the relation of the individual to other individuals and 
to the community becomes more dependent and intricate. 
The change manifests itself in ' many forms, among 
which one of the most important and obvious is the 
larger control over the individual and his activities 
assumed by the state, showing itself by the adoption of 
new statutes and the organization of new administrative 
machinery. 

One of the latest phases of individual activity to be 
taken over by the community is that of the householder. 
The earlier attitude of the law towards a man's dwelling 
was shown in the adage that "A man's house is his castle,'* 
expressing the idea that at the outer door all rights of 
the outsider, even the public, ceased, and beyond that 
point the power of the occupant was complete. 

This view of the rights of the householder has had 
to yield to the modern conception of the relations of 
men to each other, and the question, "Am I my brother's 
keeper?" receives quite different answers now, when the 
brother's right to life and health are had in mind, from 
those given in the older days, when men's minds were 
centred on obtaining freedom from official control. In 
this respect, as in other directions, it is recognized more 
and more fully that the limitations of one man's freedom 
may be absolutely essential to the enjoyment by another 
man of ordinarily favorable conditions. 

The law has always recognized as a basic principle 
in the use of property the maxim, "Thou shalt not so use 
thine own as to injure another's"; and in this principle 
support was found for the whole theory and law relating 



'22 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

to nuisances, public and private. In these days the health 
has become a matter of public interest and control, as 
the public peace long has been; and control of the use 
of a man's house has been taken over by the public with 
something of the same completeness with which the use 
of the streets and highways long has been regulated. 

The forms which the regulation has assumed are 
first, preventive, exercised by administrative boards or 
officers with large and incisive powers of inspection and 
direction ; and second, penal, enforced by the ordinary 
criminal processes of the law. The control thus exer- 
cised is usually in this country a matter of state, rather 
than of federal, control, largely delegated to the local 
units, and varies greatly with the needs of different locali- 
ties and their respective stages of civic development. 
Because of the wide range of these variations, it would 
seem worth while for householders, either individually 
or through special or general clubs, to make a study of 
the subjects over which control has already been assumed 
in the most progressive communities, and to discuss the 
tendencies manifesting themselves. There should be the 
twofold purpose of informing the members of those com- 
munities which have taken an advanced position what 
obligations have been laid upon them, and of suggesting 
to members of those communities which are backward in 
this respect what they may reasonably demand of their 
legislative bodies and to what objects the public opinion 
of their neighbors may profitably be directed. 

But however important the legal relations of the 
householder to the community at large may be, it is not 
the only nor perhaps the most important subject for 



SHELTER 23 

study. To be sure, a long step in advance Is taken when 
a householder realizes that society is no longer an aggre- 
gation of isolated units, enters into the modern spirit of 
the obligation of the individual to the community, and 
heartily obeys the laws which control the rights of house- 
holders in the use of their property. But he does not 
reach the full conception of the modern view until he 
realizes that there is a finer and higher ideal than that 
of merely conforming, however intelligently and will- 
ingly, to the regulations laid down by the community in 
which he dwells, and considers the sacrifice of the seem- 
ing liberty a trifle in comparison with the larger oppor- 
tunity for the best citizenship. No matter how specific, 
detailed, and exacting the body of sanitary law in a 
community may be, there is a large uncontrolled field 
of obligation and duty which the true citizen should 
enter. His house may conform in every respect to the 
law, but the way in which he may use it is largely a 
matter of choice. Here he should rise above and beyond 
the law and make his house a unit of health, not only for 
himself and his family, but for the community at large, 
through the wise, intelligent, and public-spirited way in 
which its use and activities are directed. 

There are two interesting tendencies in sanitary 
theory and administration concerning which the house- 
holder should inform himself. The first, in brief, is to 
lay less stress than in the past on the environment and 
more on personal contact as the medium for the spread 
of disease. The second is the burdening of the sanitary 
code and the health department with matters which in 
the light of modern knowledge have nothing to do with 



24 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

health, except occasionally in a very remote degree. For 
example, the disposal of household rubbish and garbage 
and the abatement of the smoke nuisance should be con- 
trolled by legal enactments enforced by competent expert 
officials, but on the ground of decency, order, beauty, 
and cleanliness, rather than on the ground of their effect 
on health. On the other hand, a careful study will show 
that new enactments affecting housing and involving 
health, that will secure such facilities for cleanliness as 
simpler plumbing and a cheaper and more abundant 
water supply, are gravely needed. 

It is not fitting to discuss the details of house sani- 
tation in this place. It should be noted, however, that, 
though damp cellars, dark rooms, and "sewer gas" are 
now known not to be the cause of tuberculosis, diphtheria, 
or typhoid fever, it is generally believed that when a 
person is in vigorous health or has a high degree of 
so-called "vitality," he is usually able to resist the attacks 
made by the germs of those and similar diseases. 

It is undoubtedly true that one of the factors in 
securing this vigor of body is the environment. Proper 
shelter then demands free movement of clean air both 
without and within the house, means for rapid and com- 
plete removal of body wastes, plenty of diffused light, 
such freedom from standing water, rubbish, dirty streets, 
and smoky air as would disturb peace of mind, ample 
facilities for cleanliness, and plenty of space to secure, 
at least at intervals, that degree of privacy which health 
of body and of soul alike demand. Such are briefly 
some of the sanitary considerations to be observed in 
housing. 



SHELTER 25 

On the economic side there are also interesting 
tendencies to be observed. The rapid development of 
urban life, fluctuations in the kind of employment avail- 
able with the accompanying necessity of chsinge of resi- 
dence, rapid transit, and the development of the apartment 
house are some of the modern influences which affect 
housing. The homestead known to many generations of 
the same family has practically disappeared. It is even 
growing to be a matter of uncertainty whether a family 
should own the house in which they live. Nevertheless, 
there are circumstances under which the question may 
very properly arise, and then considerations of economy, 
convenience, the future development of the neighborhood, 
financial security, comfort, probability of permanence, 
educational value, and sentiment, all have a bearing on 
the proper solution. 

Another question which faces the modern housekeeper 
is that of the relative advantages of the house, whether 
owned or rented, and the apartment. The house furnishes 
greater freedom, privacy, space, and comfort, but these 
must be weighed against the uncertain cost of operating, 
greater amount of service needed, more restricted oppor- 
tunity for absence, and usually greater distance from 
business, school, and friends, involving greater expense 
in car fares and in time and strength than would gener- 
ally be required in the case of an apartment. 

Questions 
I. To what extent have twentieth century ideals and 
practices modified the idea that "a man's home is his 
castle," over which he has supreme control? 



26 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

2. What are the essentials of a hygienic house? 

3. What pubHc agencies have you in your town for 
controlHng housing conditions ? 

4. What private agencies are there for the same 
purpose ? 

5. Are the housing laws of your town adequate? 

6. Do they contain any restrictions which are need- 
lessly burdensome ? 

7. What is a frequent motive for the adoption of 
so-called improvements and what is the true one ? 

8. What changes in construction are taking place 

(a) for good? 
{h) forbad? 

9. What architectural devices or changes in the house 
in which you live would you suggest which would tend to 
improve the sanitary conditions ? 

10. What architectural changes in your house would 
you suggest which would lessen the amount of housework 
to be done ? 

11. What are the factors of cost in the ownership of 
a house, e.g., taxes? 

12. What are the factors of cost in the rental of an 
apartment, e. g., janitor service? 

13. What are the factors of cost in the rental of a 
room in a hotel, e. g., bedding? 

14. What causes lead to renting rather than owning 
a house ? 

15. What are the advantages and disadvantages of 
both? 

16. How may the demoralizing habits which often 



SHELTER 27 

come from renting rather than owning a home be pre- 
vented ? 

17. What are the advantages of apartment house life ? 

18. What factors govern the amount of the income 
paid for housing? 

19. One-third of the income was formerly considered 
the right proportion to be paid for rent. Why is it fixed 

lower now ? 

20. Does higher rent always mean more total ex- 
penditure ? 

Bibliography 
Household Management. Bertha M. TerriU. Chicago: 

American School of Home Economics. 
Cost of Living, Chapter IV. Ellen H. Richards. New 

York : John Wiley & Sons. 
Cost of Shelter. Ellen H. Richards. New York: John 

Wiley & Sons. 
House Sanitation. Marion Talbot. Boston : Whitcomb 

& Barrows. 
Practical Hygiene. Charles Harrington. Philadelphia: 

Lea & Febiger. 
Care of a House. T. M. Clark. New York: The Mac- 

millan Co. 
The Llouse. Isabel Bevier. Chicago: American School 

of Home Economics. ' 
Principles of Sanitary Science and the Public Health. 

W. T. Sedgwick. New York : The Macmillan Co. 
Housing Reform. Lawrence Veiller. New York : Chari- 
ties Publication Society. 



28 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

Household Hygiene. S. Maria Elliot. Chicago: Ameri- 
can School of Home Economics. 

The Standard of Living, Chapter V. F. H. Streightoff. 
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Preventive Medicine and Hygiene. M. J. Rosenau. New 
York : D. Appleton & Co. 

The New Public Health. H.W.Hill. New York: The 
Macmillan Co. 

The Housing Problem in War and Peace. Washington : 
Journal of the American Institute of Architects. 

The Business of the Household. C. W. Taber. Philadel- 
phia : J. B. Lippincott Co. 

Housing Problems in America. Proceedings of the Na- 
tional Conference on Housing. 



CHAPTER IV 

FOOD 

T VARIED as are the changes which all phases of 
^ household and family life have undergone, in none 
are they more striking than in that which has to do with 
the satisfying of the primal need of mankind — nutri- 
ment. It is true that it is no new thing to realize that 
■people must not be allowed to go hungry. The new ques- 
tions are: What kinds of food will best serve the real 
needs of the body; in what quantities shall they be pro- 
vided; what methods of preparation should be chosen, 
and how can use be made of modern economic and 
commercial conditions so that the family income can be 
utilized to bring about the greatest returns in health and 
satisfaction with the least expenditure of time, strength, 
and money ? 

The fire on the hearth, the spit, the crane, and the 
brick oven have vanished. Only here and there traces 
remain of the churn and the cheese press, the curing of 
meats, the drying of fruits and vegetables, the brewing 
of beverages, the caring for stored and too often decay- 
ing potatoes and apples, and the filling of closet shelves 
with jars of pickles and preserves. In their places have 
come gas and electric stoves, the fruit and vegetable 
trains from Florida and California, the gigantic stock- 
yards, slaughter houses, and packing plants, the factories 
for the preparation and preservation of every kind of 
food substance, the cold storage warehouse, the creamery, 

29 



30 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

the Greek and Italian fruit venders, the telephone to the 
market, and the mail-order house. In fact, there are 
almost countless devices of the spirit of invention and 
of commerce which give rise to wholly new problems in 
regard to proper feeding for a household. 

The reader must look elsewhere for a discussion of 
dietetic standards and approved methods of preparation. 
The subject presents a large field which the scientist has 
but recently entered. It is the housekeeper's duty to keep 
herself informed of the progress of sound knowledge, 
and to be wary of following the food faddist in all his 
absurd and grotesque theories. 

The following general principles, however, may be 
laid down as safe guides. Food should be clean and free 
from injurious substances. It should be varied in kind 
and sufficient in amount, when meals are taken regularly, 
to satisfy a hearty appetite. It should be palatable in 
flavor and attractive in appearance. Meat should be eaten 
in moderation, which means not oftener than twice a 
day, preferably once. Milk, vegetables, and fruits should 
be used freely. Natural flavors should be developed in 
cooking, and the use of condiments and artificial flavors 
discouraged. 

Principles such as these are founded on common 
sense and experience, as well as on the teachings of 
physiology. Some of the newer dietetic considerations 
are becoming equally plain. For example, increased 
facility and rapidity of transportation and its lower cost, 
as well as cold storage plants, have broken down the old 
distinctions between the seasons, and it is no longer 
proper to urge the housekeeper not to use foods which 



FOOD 31 

are "out of season." It is a fortunate development of 
civilization which makes it possible for the dweller in 
Northern cities and towns to have fresh lettuce at low 
cost the year around, and strawberries as toothsome and 
cheap in .April as in June. The day has passed when 
the body,, starving for the vegetable acids and mineral 
matter which during the long, cold winter have been 
boiled out of the winter vegetables, has had to turn to 
"spring medicines," sarsaparilla and the like, as tonics, 
to relieve the languor and lassitude known as "spring 
fever." The notion is still current that the expenditure 
of money for foods low in so-called nutritive value is 
most unwise when the income is limited, but this is a 
serious mistake; and the opportunity offered of late years 
to secure fresh fruits and vegetables and salad plants 
through the winter, as well as summer, should be eagerly 
utilized, if housekeepers wish to keep those dependent 
on their care and intelligence in good physical condition. 
One proof that this is being done is the increasing 
substitution of fruits in winter for rich desserts and 
pastries. Another is the rapid decline of the old-time 
household industry of "putting up" preserves, which 
frequently was a gauge of the housewife's thrift and 
skill. Even in sparsely settled communities, certainly in 
all towns, she now has the opportunity to serve her 
family with fresh fruits the year around. This she does 
at great saving of effort and frequently also of money, 
if every cost is counted, unless she is still held in the 
shackles of a family tradition that a woman's devotion 
to her husband and children can be measured by the 
contents of her preserve closet. 



32 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

With the facihties which have largely increased the 
range of foods within the housekeeper's choice has come 
the double danger of overtaxing the digestive organs by- 
providing too great a variety of foods at one meal, and 
of so stimulating the appetite by a succession of different 
flavors as to lead to overeating. The housekeeper, then, 
has the new problem of guarding against temptation 
and of securing proper simplicity in the meals she offers, 
rather than the old problem of discovering new foods 
and devising new dishes to tempt the appetites of those 
under her care. 

The greatly increased ease with which, under modern 
conditions, food is obtained and prepared tempts the 
unwary housekeeper to yield to the caprices of her family. 
Frequently there is no other reason for calling for differ- 
ent food from that which has been prepared than the 
gratification of a whim. This double harm of introduc- 
ing unnecessary complexity into the household processes 
and of developing undue self-indulgence must be guarded 
against. 

She has also to resist the existing tendency to over- 
elaboration in preparation, for which, unfortunately, 
teachers of cooking are in part responsible, unless it may 
be that the stress of social rivalry and the power of 
fashion or imitation may be held responsible to a still 
greater degree for such ill-advised practices. 

Greater, perhaps, than these problems are those which 
more directly result from the fact that food is no longer 
manufactured in the home, but is prepared in factories, 
often to the extent that no further labor is needed to 
make it ready for the table. The housekeeper was for- 



FOOD 33 

merly personally familiar with all the processes through 
which the food she used had passed, even if she did not 
actually perform them. She could base her judgment as 
to their value or quality on personal knowledge. In the 
case of foods prepared or manufactured outside the home, 
this is not possible. Accordingly she must always be on 
her guard lest she buy fraudulent or unwholesome foods. 
Fortunately public sentiment is demanding that she be 
protected in her rights by legislative control, and pure 
food laws are becoming more generally adopted, and, 
with a fuller realization of their importance on the part 
of the consumer, will be more rigidly enforced. 

There are, however, pitfalls in this direction. A few 
instances will indicate their general character. The 
housekeeper must remember, for example, that a food 
may be perfectly wholesome and yet have glucose in it; 
for glucose, in spite of its evil repute, is the substance 
into which all starch and sugar must be changed in 
order to be absorbed by the body. The use of preserva- 
tives is not necessarily harmful, as has been shown by 
the practice of depending on salt, sugar, vinegar, creo- 
sote and other substances in smoke. Coloring matter 
may properly be used to make foods more attractive, and 
the housekeeper visiting the Pure Food Show will not 
be unduly alarmed by sensational exhibits of fabrics dyed 
with coloring substances when she remembers the fruit 
stains on her table linen or the attractive colors of her 
fresh vegetables. The use of so-called substitutes, for 
example, when apples are made the basis for a jelly or 
when oleomargarine is substituted for butter, results not 
in harm to the health, but, if the price which is paid is 



34 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

correspondingly low, in profit to the purse. Coffee made 
up in part of roasted cereals may even prove to be much 
more wholesome than pure coffee. In all such cases the 
protection to the family lies in proper labeling, and on 
this point public opinion and the administration of the 
law should permit of no compromise. 

Many improvements in the handling of food have 
been introduced. Cereals come in packages, crackers are 
carefully wrapped, and the barrel which seemed to supply 
an inexhaustible number of rotten apples has given place 
to the small basket with its hand-picked, carefully packed 
fruit. Such changes as these necessarily involve in- 
creased expense, but the wise housekeeper often finds 
that the actual outlay is less because of the smaller 
amount of loss or the improved quality. A reaction, 
however, seems to have set in, and many wise people 
are again urging the practice of buying in bulk. The 
subject needs careful study. On the one hand, there 
is usually the advantage which comes from the whole- 
sale rate; on the other, the danger of waste which usually 
exists when there is more of an article on hand than 
is actually needed, the danger from spoiling, and the 
danger of infections from careless handling or exposure 
to dust and insects. 

Predigested foods are on the market in great variety 
and with astonishing claims as to their merits. It goes 
almost without saying that the human body is most 
likely to be kept in health when it is given work to do 
which requires the normal use of all its functions. A 
practice which substitutes changes in foods carried on 
outside the body in laboratory or factory for the natural 



FOOD 35 

processes of the digestive system should be adopted only 
under careful professional advice. 

The subject of the relative advantages and disadvan- 
tages of buying food fully prepared for the table may 
be indicated as properly to be included among the difficult 
problems which the housekeeper must solve if she is to 
secure the best conditions for her household. 

Questions 

1. What considerations are to be borne in mind in 
determining the amount and kind of food to be supplied 
to the family? 

2. If the expenditure for food seems unduly large, 
what measures may be taken to reduce it ? 

3. What are the essentials of "a good meal"? 

4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a 
family table ? 

5. How can right habits of feeding be formed in little 
children ? 

6. What measures may be taken to interest the family 
in rational habits of feeding and in reasonably adjusting 
the time spent in preparing and eating food to the other 
activities of the household? 

7. What are the factors of cost in preparing food at 
home? 

8. What additional factors must be paid for in buying 
prepared food and what are saved ? 

9. Have community kitchens or any devices for 
economy in fuel, apparatus, and labor and reducing waste 
of food been tried in vour neighborhood ? 



36 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

10. What measures do you take to learn whether the 
quantity and quality of the food are what you pay for ? 

Bibliography 

Food Products. H. C. Sherman. New York: The Mac- 

millan Co. 
Chemistry of Food and Nutrition. H. C. Sherman. New 

York : The Macmillan Co. 
Changes in the Food Supply. L. B. Mendel. New Haven : 

Yale University Press. 
The Food Problem. Kellogg Taylor. New York : The 

Macmillan Co. 
The Fundamental Basis of Nutrition. Graham Lusk. 

New Haven : Yale University Press. 
Publications of the U. S. Department of Agriculture and 

U. S. Food Administration. 
Feeding the Family. Mary S. Rose. New York: The 

Macmillan Co. 
Food Study. Mabel T. Wellman. Boston : Little, Brown 

&Co. 
An Adequate Diet. P. G. Stiles. Cambridge: Harvard 

University Press. 
Food for the Worker. Stern and Spitz. Boston : Whit- 
comb & Barrows. 
Health of the City. Hollis Godfrey. Boston : Houghton 

Mifflin Co. 
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social 

Science. The World's Food. November, 19 17. 
Food and the War. United States Food Administration. 

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 



CHAPTER V 
CLOTHING 

THE selection of clothing suitable in amount and 
kind is one of the responsibilities still resting upon 
the head of the household. The principles to be followed 
in meeting this responsibility have, however, not as yet 
been formulated with any fullness. In fact, there is 
perhaps no other household duty which is performed 
under such confused and confusing conditions. 

It should be noticed, for example, that clothing is 
demanded from considerations of beauty, of decency, 
of hygienic fitness, of evidence of pecuniary strength, as 
well as of warmth and comfort. No evidence need be 
adduced to prove that the draping of the human form 
may produce most charming effects of line and color. 
The requirements of modesty demand that, with excep- 
tions in favor of the formal dinner or ball and the bath- 
ing beach, the person shall be covered. Comfort, too, 
and protection from cold, from contact with unpleasant 
objects, and from the approach of insects, ask that the 
form be covered. 

The anthropologist points out that the clothes of 
today are related by inheritance to the primitive devices 
invented for purposes of sex attraction and decoration. 
The economist calls attention to the fact that in no way 
can the wealth of the family and the ability to spend 
without regard to return in utility be more easily demon- 
strated than by dressing ''in the fashion." By wearing 

37 



38 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

today costly garments which are evidently different from 
anything worn by anybody yesterday, it is made plain 
that one has bought since yesterday, and so can probably 
buy again before tomorrow. The fact of this spending 
capacity is made much clearer if the clothes are not only 
conspicuously new, but obviously of such a kind as to 
indicate the wearer's inability to perform any arduous 
and possibly wage-paid work. The high-heeled shoe, the 
tight corset, the trailing gown, the very close-cut skirt, 
possess these elements of attractiveness, and the changes 
in style, conforming to no other law than the require- 
ments for change, are found to take place within limits 
set by the demand of obvious waste and uselessness. 
The rapid succession of styles, informing all the world 
when one's suit was made or one's dress was bought, is 
a constant pressure on the woman to keep up with the 
change, possibly that she may not be unlike her neigh- 
bor, possibly that all the world may know how well her 
husband is getting on, possibly that no one may suspect 
that he is really not getting ahead at all. 

The confusion of these different ends results in 
strangely difficult tasks for the woman who wishes to 
use wisely and discreetly the resources intrusted to her 
for the satisfaction of her family's needs, since the manu- 
facturer, the merchant, and the purveyor have not been 
slow to seize upon the opportunity to manipulate the 
situation to their own advantage. 

Buying is stimulated by the advertisement showing 
the new fashions, by the department store display, by the 
fictitious interest in Easter, by the early spring trip 
South, by the late spring race, by the summer journey. 



CLOTHING 39 

until every possible temptation has been ofifered in this 
connection. Much is said about the overdressed depart- 
ment store girl or factory operative ; but no outcry is 
raised against the ''Easter Opening" in the great depart- 
ment store, which prostitutes to the uses of the dealer 
the natural craving to be fair and beautiful when nature 
redrapes herself in verdure and life springs again in bud 
and blossom after the long winter's drab. 

There has been until very recently an almost com- 
plete absence of any eftort to devise right styles of dress, 
taking the lines of the human figure as the basis for 
decision. As to the adjustment of weight, the evidences 
of durability, the signs of fraudulent practices, nothing 
has as yet been formulated. Only recently have investi- 
gations revealed the extent to which the purchaser of 
textiles is the victim of deceptive processes analogous 
to those practiced in connection with the food supply. 
And, as after years of effort "pure food laws" have been 
placed on the statute books of one state after another 
and of the federal government, "pure textile" laws will 
similarly have to be enacted by our legislatures. By these 
laws the manufacturers will be required to attach labels 
giving reliable information as to fabrics, in order that 
intelligent buying may be done. 

We have as yet, therefore, no such standards for 
the adaptation of the clothing of the body in weight, in 
strain, etc., to the needs of the individual for covering 
and warmth, as we have in feeding standards based upon 
the individual's need for nutriment. 

In such studies as Rowntree's "Poverty," Chapin's 
"Standards of Living," and Mrs. More's " Wag^-e-Earners' 



40 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

Budgets," no attempt is made to ask with what clothing 
should such a definite family be provided. It is asked, 
rather: What has been the average of the clothing they 
have had and what any one family possesses is judged 
by its relation to an average which it has helped to 
determine. 

There are several other difhculties besides those con- 
nected with the honesty of the goods. One interesting 
question which arises in connection with clothing is 
that of durability. When the cloth w^as the product of 
domestic manufacture representing the labor of many 
hands for many days, it was important that it should 
wear a long time and that all possible use should be got 
out of the labor which went with it. IMoreover, in earlier 
times, when there was less crowding, when sun and air 
had readier access to the houses, the problems of infec- 
tion or of sanitary precautions were less urgent. Now, 
however, especially in cities, where the smoke constitutes 
a nuisance, where the houses are built close together and 
admit neither adequate light nor adequate air, w^here in 
the crow^ded car or on the street or in the school one 
comes into close contact with many whose standards of 
cleanHness are obviously low, and when the cloth, at least, 
is the result of mechanical processes, if the labor of mak- 
ing can be reduced by simplification of style, it may very 
well be that durability becomes less desirable than clean- 
liness assured by frequent change. The development of 
the dry cleansing business partly meets this demand; 
but that business has objectionable features associated 
with it, and it may be that with increased simplicity of 
style and the invention of fabrics which are so inexpen- 



CLOTHING 4T 

sive as to justify very brief use, greatly improved con- 
ditions in hygiene may be secured. 

Nor are the difficulties all connected with the fabric 
itself. The housekeeper who rises to the full measure 
of her responsibility will ask not only whether she as a 
purchaser is treated fairly in the manufacture of the 
cloth and making of the garment; she will ask under 
what conditions was the work done upon it carried on. 
Was sweated labor employed under bad conditions during 
excessively long days of toil at wholly inadequate wages? 
Were sanitary conditions good? Was there a working 
day limited by statute, and a reasonably adequate wage 
paid? Until recently, so little realization of the purchas- 
er's true responsibility has been developed that not in- 
frequently the attempt to arouse it has been made by 
appealing to her fear. The earlier "sweat shop" laws 
v/ere secured partly by alarming the well-to-do mother 
with regard to the dangers to which she exposed her own 
children when she bought goods made in uninspected and 
perhaps infected homes. That appeal is relatively much 
less urged today, when It is recognized that however safe 
one may keep one's own child from the infection which 
exists in the home where another child suffers, one 
cannot keep one's own heart free from pain and discon- 
tent so long as any children are forced to grow up in 
homes crowded with work, deprived of maternal care, 
while a scanty and inadequate support is obtained from 
the mother's work. 

The clothing problem was greatly aflfected by the war. 
As various types of patriotic service developed and other 
forms of distinction than that of economic power arose, 



42 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

the influence of fashion was lessened; and conspicuous 
economy, evidenced by continuing to wear the fashions of 
other years, for a time replaced the conspicuous waste 
of following new fashions. To the extent to which the 
war made reputable the professional employment of 
women of the more favored classes, those styles of dress 
inconsistent with useful work quite generally became 
outlawed; and, on the other hand, principles of utility 
found a larger place in the manufacture of women's cloth- 
ing. Moreover, the Government, by appropriating a great 
part of the wool supply to the clothing of soldiers and 
sailors, and by prescribing the number and varieties of 
certain articles of wearing apparel, limited the range 
of choice and so simplified the problem. The Government 
also fixed in the contracts under which war supplies were 
manufactured conditions of work and of pay, and as a 
result standards as to hygiene, factory organization, equal 
pay, adequate wage-scale, and collective bargaining were 
developed, which may to some extent continue. Moreover, 
the great reduction in the labor supply placed the work- 
ing and the employing groups more nearly on an equality 
in their bargaining, and through the adoption of agree- 
ments between the two an industry which before was 
characterized by chronic industrial warfare has been 
taking on the habits of peaceful and therefore uninter- 
rupted activity. However, owing to the rapid accumula- 
tion of great fortunes in the hands of persons who do not 
regard their newly acquired economic power as a trust, 
a period of great confusion in questions of dress and of 
fashion may be anticipated, and the recurrence of styles 
having no claim to attention except their novelty may be 



CLOTHING 43 

expected. The coming years, during which it will be nec- 
essary to find clothing for great masses of the people left 
well-nigh naked in devastated and war-stricken countries, 
offer a great opportunity to the responsible and public- 
spirited housewife who desires to use her influence in the 
direction of reducing misery and of increasing rational 
living everywhere. 

It is clear that the duty of selecting wearing apparel 
for the household is an opportunity of the richest kind. 
Intelligent and honest performance of that duty leads into 
some of the most important undertakings of the times, 
and opens the way into wide and invaluable service. 

Nothing has been said here in the way of specific 
instructions. No discussion of the relative merits of 
cotton, wool, linen, and silk is in place. The intelligent 
reader is aware that for the clothing of her new baby 
she should have instructions based on the most recent 
knowledge of infant hygiene. Decisions with reference 
to the clothing of each member of her household must 
rest upon consideration of climate, methods of house 
construction and of heating, of such physical peculiarities 
as hearty or delicate appetites, vigorous or inactive bodily 
habits, and other factors of that kind. It may be noted 
that experts dealing with dependent families consider 
clothing as a means of self-expression of special interest 
and importance during adolescence and youth. The prob- 
lem of directing a child's taste in clothing, and at the same 
time gratifying his often absurd desire for the novel or 
ultrafashionable article of apparel, often taxes all a 
mother's wisdom and tact. Here, as in much of her 
other spending, her chief preparation must be a 



44 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

sympathetic understanding of the nature of the task, 
a determination to buy for use, not for display, a patient 
taking account of experience, and a courageous attitude 
to novel experiments suggested for the purpose of set- 
tling vexed questions in maintaining the proper relations 
between body temperature and outside temperature, in 
giving fitting dignity to the bodies of children in their 
own minds, and in adequately meeting the demands for 
beauty and for reasonable conformity with the practices 
of those about her. 

Questions 

1. What principles do you follow in determining 
what garments you will provide for your children ? 

2. Having determined the number and kind, what 
decides the question of buying ready-made, or making at 
home ? 

3. If you buy ready-made garments, what informa- 
tion do you demand with reference to the conditions 
under which they are made ? 

4. Do you ask any questions as to the conditions of 
work prevailing in the shop where they are sold ? 

5. Discuss the relative merits of wool, cotton, silk, 
and linen for garments to be worn next to the person. 

6. What connection is there between the covering of 
the body and the dietetic needs of the body? 

7. What factors do you consider constitute "a bar- 
gain " in buying clothing ? 

8. What part do you take in securing better condi- 
tions for the work people who handle your clothing 
before you buy it? 



CLOTHING 45 

9. In what ways is it possible to express individual- 
ity in clothing without striking disregard of prevailing 
styles ? 

Bibliography 
Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia, Chapters IV and 

V. Katherine S. Anthony. New York : Henry Holt 

&Co. 
The Theory of the Leisure Class, Chapters I-VII. T. B. 

Veblen. New York : The Macmillan Co. 
Law and Order in Industry. J. H. Cohen. New York: 

The Macmillan Co. 
Clothing for Women. L. I. Baldt. Philadelphia : J. B. 

Lippincott Co. 
Household Textiles. C. M. Gibbs. Boston: Whitcomb 

& Barrows. 
Textiles. Woolman and McGowan. New York: The 

Macmillan Co. 
Clothing and Health. Kinne and Cooley. New York: 

The Macmillan Co. 
U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nos. 135, 143, 161, 186, 

187, 198. 
The Cost of Living, Chapter VII. E. H. Richards. New 

York: J. Wiley & Sons. 
The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families 

in New York City. R. C. Chapin. New York: 

Charities Publication Committee. 
Some Ethical Gains through Legislation. Florence Kelley. 

New York : The iMacmillan Co. 
The Woman Who Spends. B. J. Richardson. Boston : 

Whitcomb & Barrows. 



46 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD « 

Fatigue and Efficiency. Josephine Goldmark. New York : 

Charities PubHcation Committee. 
Publications, National Consumers' League. Mrs. Florence 

Kelley, Secretary, 289 Fourth Ave., New York City. 
Publications, National Child Labor Committee. Owen R. 

Lovejoy, Secretary, 105 East 22d St., New York City. 
Publications, American Association for Labor Legislation. 

John B. Andrews, Secretary, 131 East 23d St., New 

York City. 



CHAPTER VI 

MANAGEMENT 

^TpHERE is a great temptation to prefix the word 

-■- "scientific" to the heading of this chapter. On / 
all sides is heard the phrase, ''scientific management." 
The newspaper and the magazine, the platform speaker 
and the economist, all use it with equal glibness. The 
manager in his office, the foreman with his gang, and 
the director at his meeting are all cudgeling their brains 
or working out calculations so that the returns from the 
human labor they control will be as profitable as possible 
in terms of dollars and cents. It is true that the house- 
hold is lagging in making application of this form of 
efficiency. The reason is not often formulated, although 
it is doubtless unconsciously felt. The fact is that the 
household is not a form of organization whose purpose 
is pecuniary profit. It must surely be run on a basis 
which means that the expenditures shall not exceed the 
income and the amount of money invested shall not be 
greater than the value of the goods bought. But the 
returns from scientific household management must also 
be in terms of comfort, satisfaction, enjoyment, growth, 
education, and individual and group efficiency. These are 
reasons which give ample scope for processes that are not 
purely mechanical, but demand judgment, discretion, 
forethought, and, in fact, rather rare ability in the 
administration of the household, especially of one with 
several children and a limited income. 

47 



48 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

The ''scientific management" of the household in 
the full sense presupposes a competent manager, one 
who knows all the resources at her command and who 
has a clear conception of the returns she wishes to 
secure. It is frequently thought that she must be able 
to perform all the processes which she directs, but this 
demand is often unnecessary, provided she knows the 
general principles involved and can estimate with a fair 
degree of accuracy the cost in money and the outlay in 
time and strength, and can suggest more expeditious 
or less costly methods. It is no longer necessary for a 
housewife to be able to cure a ham or to make yeast. 
Year by year, industries are passing out of her domain. 
Even a knowledge of the technique of bread-making is 
no longer an essential part of the housekeeper's equip- 
ment. But, if she has bread made at home, she still 
needs to know, if she does not do the work herself, what 
equipment and what time- are needed to produce a satis- 
factory result with the skilled labor she employs. If she 
has not the skilled labor within her home, she will find 
that the economical and satisfactory method will be to 
buy bread from an outside factory, where skilled labor 
is employed under hygienic and fair conditions and clean, 
wholesome materials are used. 

The present-day housekeeper, especially in urban 
communities or under the stimulus of the "Home" 
magazine, is under constant temptation to elaborate and 
multiply the number of household processes and to slip 
gradually into a standard of what is usually called 
"living," but is often quite the reverse, which makes 
of the daytime hours a series of confused puzzles as to 



MANAGEMENT 49 

how to fit in all the things which must be done and of the 
night-time hours a period of racked nerves and wearied 
flesh. The process is often quite insidious. More fre- 
quent change of table linen, dishes of olives or bonbons, 
finger bowls, the entire substitution of service by the 
maid for the family "helping" at the table, more cere- 
mony in waiting on the door bell — one after another 
come the changes of style, often without increase of in- 
come or of service, prompted by the desire to make 
a "good appearance," regardless of those principles of 
comfort and honesty which should be fundamental. Here 
comes an opportunity for really scientific management. 
The question as to what is essential for the welfare of 
the household must be frankly put and intelligently 
answered. Ignoring the question or timidly yielding to 
the pressure of fashion or social competition will never 
give the feeling of freedom or the conviction of sincerity 
which are the basis of true home life and of domestic 
happiness. 

"Scientific management" in the shop means the 
introduction and skilled use of the best mechanical appli- 
ances for doing the work and measures for keeping them 
in a state of perfect repair. Here the present-day house- 
keeper has much to learn, for, as a rule, she is woefully 
unscientific. The problem is not solved by buying every 
mechanical device which a honey-tongued agent extols. 
The housekeeper must determine whether the paring 
machine will be a real economy in the hands of her un- 
skilled maid, who is already efficient with a paring knife. 
And if the paring knife is to be the tool used, it must 
always be good of its kind and in repair. No manager 



50 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

of a shop would ever expect a satisfactory or remunera- 
tive output if his work-people were allowed to work with 
tools of such poor quality as are found in many kitchens. 
All that is said on this point applies with still greater 
force to the worker. The employer, of course, must 
determine the degree of skill which she will seek for in 
her employee. Her duty, then, is to maintain conditions 
of life and work, such as hours of labor, a due amount 
of personal freedom and recreation, sleeping accommo- 
dations, intelligent direction, and routine of work, which 
will result in her securing the maximum of efficiency 
from the work-woman. 

Forethought is a quality which has even more play 
in scientific household management than in business, and 
yet, in these modern days, its value is practically ignored. 
This is due, in part, to the ease with which, by means 
of the telephone and the delivery wagon, the ready-to-eat 
and the ready-to-wear article may be brought to hand and 
the threatened catastrophe be an agony of but a few hours 
or even minutes. Another reason lies in frequent lack 
of familiarity on the part of the housekeeper with the 
processes of her household, the materials necessary for 
meeting its needs, and, last but not least, the efficiency 
of her domestic helper. Forethought is not synonymous 
with worry, nagging, or slavery. It consists in an intelli- 
gent provision for future but certain needs before they 
actually arise, and such order and system as will lead to 
genuine comfort. The so-called ''emergencies," which 
seem to make up a large part of the activities of some 
households, are for the most part needless. It would, in 
fact, be difficult to name more than a verv few emer- 



MANAGEMENT 5 1 

gencies which could not be avoided by a small use of 
sound sense. 

In the olden time, very little money was actually 
handled or used in the management of a household. The 
goods which were produced in excess were bartered for 
the few other goods needed. Labor was seldom paid for 
in money. This is true to some extent in a few com- 
munities today, but, on the whole, the system prevails 
of a money income to be expended as money payment 
for household supplies. There results, then, the new 
need of a system of accounts. Many bookkeeping de- 
vices for housekeepers have been proposed, but most 
of them are complex, mechanical, and fail completely to 
accomplish their purpose, which should be not merely 
to show for what the money has been spent, but how it 
might be more wisely spent. 

Closely connected with this problem in management 
is that which has to do with the care of money resources, 
and especially with investments for future needs. Poets 
and prophets are seeing visions of a social order, when 
no man shall steal from the labor of another man, and 
when, in the spirit of Brotherhood, all who are able- 
bodied shall labor and the weak, the sick, the crippled, 
the defective, and the aged shall be the care of the strong 
and the young. But in spite of many signs of growing 
discontent with the present industrial and social order, 
a radical change is not in the near future, and, accord- 
ingly, a problem in the management of the household 
is how best to take care of those resources which the 
study of the family needs has shown can be set aside 
after the satisfaction of daily wants. The problem is one 



52 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

which cannot be answered in detail in this place. It 
hardly ever presents itself twice in the same form and 
the answers are correspondingly varied. The possibiH- 
ties, such as insurance, savings-bank account, national 
securities, the family homestead, or the education of the 
children along special lines, may well be considered an 
important phase of management for the family to study 
over together. 

It is needless to point out that the problem of invest- 
ment as well as that of charitable giving was wholly 
altered by the war and by the needs growing out of war. 
The Liberty Loans and "drives" for such extra-govern- 
mental agencies as the Red Cross and Community Service 
indicate lines of investment, as well as of contribution, 
whose era of usefulness has not passed. This does not 
affect the thesis that these undertakings and decisions 
should be acted upon by the family group as a whole. 

Questions 

1. What modern conditions especially affect house- 
hold methods ? 

2. In what way and to what extent, if at all, should 
household management use modern business methods? 

3. In order to decide whether the administration of 
a household is really economical, what points must be 
borne in mind? 

4. What household interests and activities afford 
special opportunity for choice as against drift? 

5. What tests will you apply to desired improve- 
ments before you decide that you should adopt them ? 



MANAGEMENT 53 

6. In what respects, if any, is the telephone an eco- 
nomical investment? 

7. What are the arguments for and against the reten- 
tion of "spring cleaning"? 

8. Do you distinguish between hygienic and aesthetic 
cleanliness ? 

9. What use can be made of your system of house- 
hold accounts to bring about more scientific management ? 

10. Name some of the proposed conditions which are 
expected to improve household and family life. 

11. Why do they frequently fail in this result? 

12. Make a list of incidental household expenses which 
are not likely to be provided for in advance. 

13. What determines the real economy in the purchase 
and use of mechanical appliances ? 

14. What other expenses than that of plumbing re- 
pairs are due chiefly to neglect ? 

15. Make a list of items of waste and drudgery that 
might leave the house to advantage. 

16. Have you made any study of the different motions 
and the time involved in doing housework, such as clean- 
ing a room or washing the dinner dishes, with a view to 
greater economy? 

17. Have you calculated whether the continued use 
of broken, antiquated, and inconvenient equipment is truly 
economical, or whether it uses up strength and time in 
such a way that there is waste at other points, such as care 
of children? 

18. Is it possible to cooperate with your neighbors 
in the use of such labor and strength-saving devices as 
vacuum cleaners and washing machines? 



54 'l"i^'- MODERN HOUSKHOLI) 

19. Before deciding on an elaborate table service, 
such as a bread and butter plate, another course, a daily 
change of table linen, do you estimate the added time 
and strength required of the maid ? 

20. In estimating whether the wages you pay a cook 
are high or low, do you take into account the food burned 
or wasted or stolen, or other evidence of her lack of skill, 
thrift, or honesty? 

21. Do you know how long it should take your maid 
to do any given piece of work, such as cleaning the silver 
or washing the windows ? 

22. What investments should be made in a family 
with children ? 

23. What means can you devise for lowering the 
cost of living without the sacrifice either of real comfort 
or of efficiency? 

24. What evidence does your household furnish that 
the prevailing high cost of living is due in part to 
extravagant standards ? 

25. Do you, with one girl doing "general housework," 
attempt to maintain the style of an establishment cared 
for by three maids ? 

26. What causes of friction, discomfort, or annoy- 
ance in your home can be removed? 

Bibliography 

Care of a House. T. M. Clark. New York : The Mac- 

millan Co. 
Euthenics. Ellen H. Richards. Boston: Whitcomb & 

Barrows. 



MANAGEMENT 55 

Household Management. Bertha M. Terrill. Chicago: 
American School of Household Economics. 

Fuels of the Household. Marian White. Boston : Whit- 
comb & Barrows. 

Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning. Richards and 
Elliott. Boston: Whitcomb & Barrows. 

Cost of Living. Ellen H. Richards. New York: John 
Wiley & Sons. 

The Efficient Kitchen. Georgie B. Child. New York: 
Robert IM. McBride & Co. 

Home Efficiency. M. B. and R. W. Bruere. New York: 
The Macmillan Co. 

Lower Living Costs in Cities. C. L. King. New York : 
D. Appleton & Co. 

The Business of the Household. C. W. Taber. Philadel- 
phia: J. B. Lippincott Co. 

Household Management. Florence Nesbitt. New York : 
Russell Sage Foundation. 

Experiment in Household Finance, J. H. Canfield. Cos- 
mopolitan, July, 1902. 

The Cooperative Family. F. E. Leupp. Atlantic Monthly, 
December, 1909. 

Mechanics of the Household. E. S. Keene. New York : 
McGraw-Hill Book Co. 

The Home and the Family. Kinne and Cooley. New 
York: The Macmillan Co. 

Household Engineering. Christine Frederick. Chicago: 
American School of Home Economics. 

U. S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of Standards 
Circulars 55^ 7^; 75- 



CHAPTER VII 
DOMESTIC SERVICE 

AIMONG the most difficult questions which present 
themselves to the housekeeper are those connected 
with securing help in the performance of her household 
tasks. There are the various things which must be done 
to keep the house a clean, attractive, well-ordered place 
in which to live and to maintain the machinery for the 
daily feeding, the nightly sleeping, the periodic dressing 
of children, and the cleansing of linen, garments, and 
places used. Which of these tasks shall be performed by 
members of the family, which by persons who live with 
the family though not of it, which by persons who come 
in to perform the task and go when it is done, and which 
by those to whom the task can be taken, is one of the 
fundamental questions of administration. There are com- 
munities, few and far between, in which domestic service 
is almost eliminated as a household difficulty. In a city 
in which the laundry business has been well organized, so 
that the housekeeper can both risk her garments and pay 
the bills, where it is possible to secure at reasonable rates 
fairly skilled service by the hour or by the task (as in 
the case of the so-called employment agencies generally 
conducted by Japanese in San Francisco), where the deli- 
catessen shops make easy the private eating of prepared 
dishes and the restaurants tempt to the congregate dining- 
room, and where perhaps the climate is such as to reduce 
to a minimum the need of fires and the fuel gives rise to 

S6 



DOMESTIC SERVICE 57 

little dust and smoke, the household tasks may be reduced 
to the daily putting in order, caring for the children in 
the group, and doing a small amount of work in connec- 
tion with the meals. With the invention of labor-saving 
devices, too, and the development of collective, perhaps 
municipal, provision of light, water, and heat, the task 
is further simplified. In households in which the mother 
and daughters have acquired the household arts, are 
physically strong, and have administrative capacity, the 
maid-servant may be entirely dispensed with. For many 
housekeepers, however, whose physical strength is not 
great, whose early training in the household arts has been 
inadequate, or who have outside interests, the need of 
intelligent and skilled service within the home is very 
urgent and today often satisfied only with great diffi- 
culty. The reasons for this are interesting and possibly 
worth reviewing at this point. 

In the first place, although the relationship of mistress 
and maid is a relationship with which well-nigh uni- 
versally acknowledged difficulties are associated, it has 
until recently been the subject of little careful or scien- 
tific study. Since any one can enroll herself among the 
so-called domestic servants, however little training she 
may have or however lacking in capital of any sort, and 
because the products of the labor are not only transient 
in character but measured in terms, not of profit but of 
comfort and well-being, much less attention has been 
given to it than to factory or commercial employment. 
Part of this failure to observe closely and to analyze 
adequately the factors in the situation is also due to the 
fact that the immediate parties to the wage-bargain in 



58 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

this case are women, often married or of less than full 
age, and so not only legally incapable but lacking induce- 
ir.ent to scan their acts closely. 

Undoubtedly the historical association of this relation- 
ship with that of master and slave, master and redemp- 
tioner, and master and apprentice, all involving both 
legal and social inferiority, has something to do with 
the contempt often felt not only for the maid-servant as 
an individual, but for the relationship itself. *' Menial," 
which once suggested "within the walls" (mocnia), has 
become synonymous with "despicable." The stigma of 
social inferiority attaches at the present time; the maid 
is addressed by her first instead of by her family name, 
is excluded from social intercourse with the group she 
serves, and is often regarded as socially below the worker 
in the factory and the shop. At present, of course, these 
differences are most marked in those communities in 
which ihe domestic servant group is wholly or largely 
colored and where the shadow of slavery still is heaviest; 
and the fact that, in other sections of the country, the 
great majority of those who find their way into this 
kind of employment are foreign-born or children of 
foreigners undoubtedly retards the establishment of a 
more democratic relationship, and perhaps hinders the 
more rapid awakening of housekeepers to the desirability 
of a change of attitude on this question. They often feel 
a contempt for the person of color or for the foreign 
girl who serves, and they continue to despise the service 
she renders. 

Certain associations with the earlier legal peculiari- 
ties too, as well as with the S(xMal difi'erences, impede the 



DOMESTIC SERVICE 59 

rational consideration and consequent improvement of 
this occupation. The old law books said that the maid 
was under a duty to obey all ''lawful orders," and were 
full of illustrations of how harsh and arbitrary an order 
might be and still be "lawful." This meant, of course, 
that the mistress was entitled to the use of the person 
of the maid rather than to the product of her labor, and 
the implication of so m.e thing very like servitude was 
therefore present. Another peculiarity of this relation- 
ship is its so-called "entirety." If either party fails to 
perform in full the obligation undertaken, she forfeits 
the right to claim any fulfillment by the other party. If, 
for example, the maid has undertaken to work for a 
week, and quits after three days without fault on the 
mistress's part, no wages can be claimed for the three 
days' work. On the other hand, if, after one day, the 
mistress discharges without good cause, the entire week's 
pay may be claimed. This doctrine does not prevail in 
all communities. Some states. New Hampshire, Kansas, 
and a number of others, have adopted an equitable theory 
that since the employer has been enriched by the service 
performed, and cannot return it, she will be called upon 
to pay what the service was reasonably worth. AIo re- 
over, whether the agreement was for a given period or 
not is often a difficult question of fact, to be determined 
in the light of the custom prevailing in any given locality. 
So apt is there to be misunderstanding on this point 
that in some cities, notably New York, the Legal Aid 
Society has issued statements warning both mistresses 
and maids upon this subject, and urging them to make 
clear to each other their intention in the matter and to 
be prepared to fulfill their obligation. 



6o THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

The domestic employer is thus legally and socially 
more advantageously placed than the domestic employee. 
The nature of the demand for service of this kind, how- 
ever, is so peculiar, and the conditions under which it 
presents itself so unlike other kinds of demand for wage- 
workers, that in some respects the domestic servant is at 
a distinct advantage as compared with other wage-earning 
women. In industrial and mercantile establishments the 
employer is at an advantage as compared with his pro- 
spective employee, in knowledge of the business and of 
the market, in ability to wait and in bargaining skill. 
In domestic establishments, on the other hand, the oppo- 
site is true. Here the employee knows the job, knows 
the market, has the power to wait and bargaining skill 
probably greater than the employer. The result has been 
that, without any organization and without combinations 
of domestics to do collective bargaining, wages, hours, 
and working conditions have in many communities been 
very considerably improved for groups of w^orkers. These 
changes, being due not to any well-considered plan, 
worked out on the basis of a careful study of the occu- 
pation, but rather to individual and often ill-considered 
and ill-advised whims on the part of maid-servants, have 
done little to standardize the service as a whole and to 
make things better for those workers who lack the spe- 
cial abilities to which reference has been made. For 
some, therefore, wages have been raised, the half-day 
out secured, limitations placed on evening work, privi- 
leges of a social kind obtained, and better living condi- 
tions sometimes demanded. These are all good so far 
as they go. But there have been few suggestions as to 



DOMESTIC SERVICE 6l 

standards of work or methods of administration. Labor- 
saving devices have not been invented or structural 
changes in the house of a kind Hkely to facihtate work 
proposed. 

Other features of the relationship which distinguish 
it from most wage-bargains are, first, the practice of 
paying partly in kind. The "living in" system, in ac- 
cordance with which the employee is housed and fed 
by the employer, is found in no other occupation in this 
country, except in the case of agricultural labor and in 
construction work done by gangs. It is being much dis- 
cussed in connection with the shop assistants in England, 
where it still survives, and many objections urged against 
it there could be with equal force urged against it in 
the case of domestic labor here. These objections are 
chiefly three. The first is that it is difificult, if not im- 
possible, to standardize the accommodations provided. 
The room occupied by one maid may be thoroughly com- 
fortable, adequate in size, attractively furnished, and 
wholly suitable, and her meals may be abundant, palatable, 
perhaps lavish, while a maid in a neighboring house- 
hold may be housed under wholly unsuitable conditions 
and expected to content herself with food inadequate in 
amount and unattractive in kind. 

A second objection to the "living in" is found in the 
fact that the maid, while physically within the family 
group, is spiritually separated from them by the social 
barrier to which reference has been made. Although 
she lives in the house, she gives no account of her goings 
or comings ; she is therefore without the protection 
furnished by her own family's knowledge of her move- 



^ 



62 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

ments, and the family with which she hves suppHes no 
substitute. On this account, the employment is considered 
by students of the social evil, by wardens of reforma- 
tories for women, and by those familiar with the history 
of the girls who have been drafted into lives of immo- 
rality, as a conspicuously "dangerous trade." 

A third consequence of the "living in" system is that 
it becomes more difficult to standardize the hours of 
work. More and more the community is recognizing 
the advantages of a standardized day. Many states have 
limited the hours of employment of women in factories 
and workshops, possibly in mercantile establishments. In 
some states night work is prohibited for such groups 
of workers. But when the maid lives in, so that she can 
hear the front door and telephone bells, why should she 
not answer them ; why not call on her to get the early 
breakfast, the late supper, or to render any service needed 
between those extremes of the day? 

This lack of standardization in the accommodations 
and the length of working day is characteristic of most 
features of domestic service, and might by a superficial 
student be ascribed to the nature of the tasks performed. 
That this is not the true explanation is shown by the 
rapidity with which many forms of personal service are 
now being organized and, as it were, professionalized, 
as the industrial processes were organized at the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century. The demand for the 
midday meal near the place of business is developing 
new kinds of "waiting on table." The waitress, the boy 
behind the lunch counter, and the cafcticre where one 
serves one's self, are all substitutes for the old midday 



DOMESTIC SERVICE 63 

home dinner. The shampoo, hairdressing, manicure, and 
''shoe-shine" estabHshments provide other forms of 
menial personal service so specialized and so dignified 
as to remove all question of personal relationship and so 
all question of superiority and inferiority. 

Along such lines further development may be ex- 
pected. More reliance will be placed upon standardized 
services performed outside the home ; more upon stand- 
ardized services performed within the home by the person 
who comes to perform her task and goes when it is done ; 
and for the general helper in the home the same process 
must take place. 

As the housekeeper becomes more conscious of the 
true nature of her function and has her attention more 
and more focused on the problem of administration, the 
canons of efficiency will be observed, tasks of all kinds 
will be standardized as to products and method of per- 
formance, instructions will become definite, devices in 
the nature of profit-sharing will be invented to interest 
the maid in her own increasing efficiency and skill. 

When the principles of management have been worked 
out, the tasks of the maid standardized, and the proper 
grouping of tasks agreed upon, the training of both 
mistress and maid can be undertaken with some degree 
of confidence. As long as it is a matter of doing a mass 
of heterogeneous tasks as any accidental mistress may 
want them done, it is impossible to consider a course of 
vocational training leading to domestic service. If, how- 
ever, the problem should become one of supplying trained 
people to render service in connection with the mainte- 
nance of a well-ordered, dignified, agreeable family life. 



64 THE MODERN UOUSEHOLD 

lived among clean and pleasant surroundings, where 
good temper and consideration for others prevail, and 
if a reasonable administrative capacity could be expected, 
courses of study based on principles of science and art 
could be offered to attract girls of administrative capacity 
and high character. 

Questions 

1. What are the factors of cost of keeping a servant? 

2. In your experience, how does the amount paid for 
wages compare with that paid for rent? 

3. Test the theory that the cost of keeping a servant 
is twice her wages by making a full estimate of every 
item which your servant costs. 

4. What are the factors of cost of laundry work done 
outside the house? What are its advantages? Its dis- 
advantages ? 

5. Would you urge the development and improvement 
of the laundry system as an organized industry, so that, 
like tailoring, it should disappear from the household? 
State the reasons for your opinion. 

6. What kinds of labor must be done in the house? 

7. How can they be reduced in amount? 

8. Why have the conditions of domestic service not 
been considered as seriously as other forms of labor? 

9. What light does the historical study of domestic 
service throw on its present conditions? 

10. What effect have general economic conditions on 
the conditions of domestic service? 

11. What are the difficulties of the domestic em- 
ployer ? 



DOMESTIC SERVICE ^5 

12. What are the difficulties on the side of the 
employee ? 

13. What duties have you the right to require your 
maid to perform which necessitate her sleeping in your 

house ? 

14. How may carelessness of servants be controlled 

or corrected? 

15. What tests should be applied to any proposed 
remedy for existing difficulties? 

16. What remedies will meet these tests? 

17. How far are these remedies within reach of the 
individual housekeeper? 

18. In what ways and to what extent may the indi- 
vidual members of the family aid in applying them? 

19. Make out a series of questions to be asked em- 
ployers concerning the possibilities of having a part or 
the whole of the housework done by persons living 
outside. 



Bibliography 

Domestic Service. Lucy M. Salmon. New York: The 
Macmillan Co. 

Progress in the Household. Lucy M. Salmon. Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Industrial Democracy, Part HI, Chapter II, "The Hig- 
gling of the Market." Sidney and Beatrice Webb. 
New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 

Democracy and Social Ethics, Chapter IV. Jane Addams. 
New York : The Macmillan Co. 

Commentaries. Blackstone. Book I, Chapter XVI. 



66 THE AIODERTf HOUSEHOLD 

Shop Slavery and Emancipation, Chapter II, "Living in." 
William Paine. London: P. S. King. 

Household Management. Bertha M. Terrill. Chicago: 
American School of Home Economics. 

Woman in Industry. Edith Abbott. New York : D. Apple- 
ton & Co. 

Report of Commission on Household Employment. Y. W. 
C. A. of the United States. 

A New Way of Housekeeping. Clementina Black. Lon- 
don : W. Collins Sons & Co. 



A 



CHAPTER VIII 
EDUCATION 

FEW generations ago the education of the child 
was carried on in the home, a domestic industry. 
He learned to read at his mother's knee. His body grew 
strong and obedient to his will by carrying wood and 
water, feeding the chickens, doing the chores which 
contributed to the family welfare. His social instinct 
was developed by play with brothers and sisters or the 
neighbors' children in the barn or garret or orchard, 
where ingenuity and imagination had full scope. Tasks 
of many kinds gave him manual facility and the sense of 
power which comes through producing. Sacrifices and 
hardships and economies showed him the meaning of 
real values. Stern precepts of duty, obedience, and 
honesty were taught him in the home. The observance 
of Sunday, instruction in the Bible, and family worship 
trained his religious nature. 

The contrasting conditions of today reveal one of the 
problems of the household. The beginning of the day 
finds the prime interest of the family to be getting the 
children to school on time. They must be neatly dressed, 
books must be gathered together, and possibly the con- 
tributions for a school charity, for a class party, or for 
the school luncheon put in the pockets. The noon meal 
must be so timed as to suit the children's convenience. 
The hours after regular school exercises are all too short 
for the parties and clubs and athletics and dancing and 

67 



68 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

music lessons. In brief, the school and its organized 
activities have taken from the home most of the child's 
training, physical, manual, social, mental, and moral. Is 
there left a place for the family life to furnish training 
in any of these respects or in allied lines, such as aesthetic, 
productive, or spiritual? Is the home destined to be 
merely a shelter where physical needs are met, or can 
it still serve as an agency for true character building? 
Many a mother is conscious of the answer she wishes to 
give and helpless in finding means of bringing her hopes 
to pass. She must ask what is left of the old which 
can be used, and what opportunities do the new conditions 
offer? 

The gas range or electric heater, the telephone, 
the municipal heating plant, the plumbing, the electric 
light, the vacuum cleaner, are newcomers in the home 
and must be made to serve at least as well as their prede- 
cessors, even though not in the same way. Their proper 
use and simple repairs may certainly be as educative as 
picking up chips or carrying pails of water. The hammer 
and the screw-driver are useful tools of learning. Open- 
ing a box of soap or tightening the dressing-table handles 
is an act whose effect is greater than the service rendered. 
Even with mechanical and almost automatic appliances 
at hand, there are still household tasks to be done regu- 
larly and carefully, such as making beds, dusting, keep- 
ing rooms neat and tidy, caring for plants, occasional 
repairing, besides the routine tasks of dining-room and 
kitchen which still survive. These provide, as they always 
have provided, for training in power to cooperate and 
to carry responsibilities. 



EDUCATION 69 

Another surviving subject for domestic training is 
language. The home may seem to have a hopeless task 
in its attempt to counteract the influence of the play- 
ground, the street, and even of the school; but it has 
the advantage over its competitors of the early start 
and the continuous opportunity. Reading, story-telling, 
famihar talk about the day's doings and the family inter- 
ests are all means for enriching the vocabulary, showing 
distinctions in meanings of words, developing careful 
pronunciation and enunciation, training in modulation of 
the voice, and, above all, establishing habits of courtesy 
and respect in speech. 

Here the family table is an aid of supreme importance. 
The occasions when the family gather to ''break bread" 
furnish easy opportunities for giving example and pre- 
cept in manners, in self-control, in regard and thought- 
fulness for others, and in mutual sympathy. The family 
table, with all its disadvantages of trouble and cost, may 
be made worth many, many times the price paid for it, 
if it is used intelligently and discreetly, and it should on 
no account be allowed to disappear as one of the family's 
educational resources. 

The training given by the school must be 'to a con- 
siderable extent for the child as a member of the group. 
His training as an individual, the development of his 
special powers, must be cared for in the home, and the 
administration of the home must provide for safeguard- 
ing that precious possession, individuality, while care- 
fully and even sternly warding off selfish and mean 
tendencies. Playrooms, workshops, bedrooms, and per- 
sonal belongings give the needed opportunity for wise 



yO THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

direction of individuality and the sense of responsibility 
which comes from ownership and power of control, 
while, on the other hand, they may be used as a means 
of fostering generous impulses and a helpful spirit. 

The widest possible participation in the household 
processes and the family activities should be granted to 
the children. The kitchen should never be closed to them, 
as is unfortunately sometimes the case. The apportion- 
ment of the family budget should be made a matter of 
their concern as early as possible. Choice of clothing 
and a responsibility for it may be turned over to them 
at an early age. Errands to the market, the post office, 
the library, or the bank may be intrusted to them, and 
the steps will be willingly taken if the doing of the 
errand means the assumption of a real responsibility and 
not merely an enforced task, due to the self-indulgence 
of an older person in authority or an evident desire to 
get the child out of the way. 

The child need not be made to realize that the home 
actually exists for him and that he is its chief asset, 
although these are the facts; but he should be made to 
feel that the part he plays, the duty intrusted to him, 
and the contribution he makes to the family welfare are 
important, and he must not fail in them. He will thus 
grow gradually into a larger efficiency and be ready to 
meet the issues of life when he leaves the protecting 
care of his childhood home. 

Another kind of training which remains in the hom.e 
is that which has to do with the physical life and habits 
of the child. The old mammy was quite wise in saying, 
when she came to take charge of a two-day -old child, 



EDUCATION 71 

that she "didn't like to begin so late; a child got so 
many bad habits the first day." Regularity of habits, 
cleanliness of person, right standards of air supply, 
reasonable choice of food, proper methods of feeding, 
and decency in clothing are among the teachings which 
the home must give the child in earliest infancy and 
continue to give by persistent and patient effort all 
through the formative years. Hereditary tendencies 
must be observed and directed or checked, as the case 
may be, and thus future ills be warded off through right 
living. Moreover, it is in the home, rather than on the 
street or in the playground, that the mysteries of new 
life are to be revealed to the child, and sex distinctions 
and sex functions are to be made the basis of instruction 
in the principles and practice of sex health. This is one 
of the gravest duties which belong to parents, and it is 
lamentable that so many are incompetent to fulfill it. 

Within the home must come the training which gives 
the individual consciousness of belonging to a group. 
He recognizes dimly that there his physical needs are 
satisfied, because he does not suffer. He is sheltered, 
clothed, and fed. He is given what he has a right to 
have. He is «;urrounded with love and sympathy, and 
feels a sense of protection. He must learn to give in 
return. He must help when there is sickness or suffering, 
join with others in offering courtesy to "the stranger 
within the gates," and make from time to time little 
sacrifices called for by the good of the whole. In train- 
ing him thus, the home will so educate him that, when 
he becomes a member of a larger group, he will not 
merely clamor for his "rights," but will render those 



y2 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

services which make for the large social consciousness 
that is to prevail if increasing human welfare is to mark 
the advancing years. 

Such are some of the educational problems of today 
which the home must face and solve, and in so far as it 
shirks or ignores them it fails to justify itself as an 
institution to be perpetuated. 

Questions 

1. What kinds of training of the young are going 
out of the home? 

2. What arrangements can be made so that the 
children will have playrooms, workshops, or laboratories 
where they may develop individual gifts? 

3. How may respect for the children's rights to their 
personal property be shown? 

4. In what ways may they be trained to care for 
their personal property? 

5. How may they be taught to be generous with 
what belongs to them ? 

6. What opportunities may be given them to co- 
operate in choosing their clothing and even to have full 
responsibility ? 

7. How may they be trained in the handling and use 
of money? 

8. What methods may be used to teach wise and 
proper saving? 

9. What means may be used to train them in voice 
and speech? 

10. To what extent may they be allowed to partici- 
pate in the family conversation without dominating it? 



EDUCATION 73 

11. What household duties may be assigned to them 
for which they may be held responsible ? 

12. How may habits of personal cleanliness be en- 
forced ? 

13. How may sex functions be best explained? 

14. To what extent may manufacturing processes be 
retained in the home for educational purposes? 

Bibliography 

Some Thoughts Concerning Education. John Locke. 

New York: The Macmillan Co. 
Leonard and Gertrude. Pestalozzi. Boston : D. C. Heath 

&Co. 
Cyclopedia of Education. Paul Monroe. Article on 

Family Education. New York: The Macmillan Co. 
The Coming Generation. W. B. Forbush. New York: 

D. Appleton & Co. 
Euthenics. Ellen H. Richards. Boston: Whitcomb & 

Barrows. 
Home, School, and Vacation. Annie W. Allen. Boston : 

Houghton Mifflin Co. 
The Town Child. R. A. Bray. London. 
Democracy and Social Ethics, Chapter VL Jane Addams. 

New York: The Macmillan Co. 
Progress in the Household, Chapter H. L. M. Salmon. 

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 
Democracy beginning at Home. H. F. Cope. Religious 

Education, February, 1919. 
Teaching in the Home. A. A. Berle. New York : Moffat, 

Yard & Co. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE ACTIVITIES OF THE HOUSEHOLD 

THE physical operations and material needs of the 
household are, of course, of fundamental impor- 
tance. They do not, however, by any means constitute 
all the interests of the household, as many persons 
unfortunately appear to believe ; they are merely the 
basis for the expression of those qualities which distin- 
guish human beings from other forms of life. Food, 
warmth, and protection must be furnished, but not 
as ends in themselves. Every principle studied, every 
reform advocated, and every process adopted should be 
considered in the light of its role as a part of the founda- 
tion for the highest and best expression of Hfe, whether 
it be physical, intellectual, moral, or spiritual. The house 
which is perfectly administered on its physical side has a 
small function in the economy of life unless it contrib- 
utes to the upbuilding of men with noble minds and souls. 
As Emerson said : "A house should bear witness in all its 
economy that human culture is the end to which it is 
built and garnished. It is not for festivity. It is not for 
sleep. But the pine and the oak shall gladly descend from 
the mountains to uphold the roof of men as faithful and 
necessary as themselves, to be the shelter always open 
to the good and true, a hall which shines with sincerity, 
brows ever tranquil, and a demeanor impossible to dis- 
concert." 

In the preceding pages the attempt has been made to 

74 



ACTIVITIES OF THE HOUSEHOLD 75 

keep this point of view steadily before the reader. The 
activities of the household which remain to be considered 
are often said, although perhaps in the last analyses not 
quite truthfully, to represent "the higher life." Educa- 
tion, hospitality, civic cooperation, aesthetic enjoyment, 
and moral and spiritual growth are all forms of activity 
which must be demanded as the fruitage of those domes- 
tic efforts which are so exacting and costly as often to 
blind the housekeeper to the fact that they are not her 
final goal. 

The possibilities and obligations of the household 
in these different directions are as varied as the families 
to which they belong. It is, therefore, impossible to for- 
mulate with precision any details of procedure. Certain 
general suggestions may, however, prove helpful. For 
example, if the training of children is a paramount duty, 
then the retention of domestic industries, as far as they 
prove educational, is not only justifiable but necessary. 
Moreover, if the carrying on of such industries as cook- 
ing and sewing contributes to the sense of pleasure or 
comfort, or develops a spirit of cooperation or unity in 
the household, they may be retained, even if they would 
not justify themselves on grounds of economy alone. 
Whether the result is worth the cost must be determined 
by intelligent and frank discussion. 

Hospitality is a form of household activity which >^ 
represents the satisfaction of a very real human craving. 
Nevertheless, the forms which it often assumes are such 
as to defeat entirely its purposes. Undue cost, social 
pretense, anxiety, and nerve strain crowd out genuine 
friendliness, enjoyment, and pleasure on the part of 



76 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

hostess and guest alike. Methods of attaining the real 
end in entertaining friends should very properly be made 
a matter for the family council, and devices for using 
modern social resources in independent and pleasurable 
ways should be adopted. The current forms of hospital- 
ity into which children are forced seem to need particular 
consideration and readjustment, while forms of entertain- 
ment, involving less cost and carried on with less for- 
mality, constitute a need which many adults feel strongly. 
The household is surely not performing its functions 
adequately until it solves these problems. 

The study of the family accounts may well be given 
a larger place among the activities of the household. 
Such discussion not only has real educational value, but, 
for the time which it may consume, will contribute more 
to the development of a loyal family spirit than any other 
form of cooperation. Every member of the family, even 
to the youngest, should sit in council, learn what are the 
resources of the group as a whole, and determine by joint 
action, guided, of course, by the more responsible and 
wise members, just what amounts shall be assigned for 
group expenditures and what for individual needs and 
indulgences. The ethical and social principles involved 
are far-reaching and the training in so-called business 
habits will be invaluable if the discussions are conducted 
with frankness and generosity and the decisions carried 
out with honesty and devotion. 

The proper development of the aesthetic faculties and 
the gratification of the sense of beauty is a problem which 
is taking on new forms, as society is breaking away from 
the austere influences of earlier generations and as the 



ACTIVITIES OF THE HOUSEHOLD 'J'J 

means of gratifying the appeal for beauty in form and 
color are year by year brought within the reach of a 
larger number of people. The expression of a sense of 
beauty through wall coverings, furniture, pictures, table- 
ware, ornaments, and other household and personal equip- 
ment affords an interesting and valuable family activity. 

A great change has come within recent times in the 
formal religious activities of the household. Family 
prayers, Bible study, churchgoing, and the observance of 
Sunday as a day of prayer and devotion have given place 
to a new order. The modern problem is how to save 
from the wreckage that which was spiritually enriching 
and uplifting, while gladly breaking free from deadly 
formalism. Many wise leaders are giving help in this 
direction, especially through such agencies as the Reli- 
gious Education Association, and every one interested 
in family welfare should be eager to make use of their 
suggestions. 

But there are also activities without the walls of the 
home which appear in a new phase during these later 
years and whose significance must not be ignored, espe- 
cially since the right use of the opportunities they offer 
presents an interesting problem. One form which these 
activities take is sometimes known under the term, "com- 
munal pleasures." The old-time husking-bee, spelling- 
match, sewing-circle, and singing-school have given way 
to organized methods of furnishing entertainment, infor- 
mation, or recreation, often conducted at public expense. 
The theatre, the library, the park, collections of art, 
concerts, and museums devoted to different fields of 
knowledge are increasing in number, attractiveness, and 



78 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

availability. The fact that they lure from the home 
fireside and tend to neglect of duties is sometimes de- 
plored. The more intelligent attitude of mind is that 
which recognizes in them agencies for genuine family 
progress and thus uses them. Americans have in this 
respect much to learn from some foreign nations, notably 
Germany, where it is much more usual than in this 
country to see a whole family group find pleasure or 
profit in making use together of some of these com- 
munal agencies. Visits may be made together in the late 
afternoon, Saturdays, holidays, and even Sundays. Not 
merely the chance for increased information and culture, 
but the delight of sharing enjoyment, should make of 
such hours both happy memories and vital forces in group 
and individual growth. The dramatic sense of a younger 
member of the family, the taste in art or music of another, 
may thus be fostered and at the same time dignified with 
a kind of leadership, if the other members of the family 
are open-minded and sympathetic in their response. One 
most desirable reaction will inevitably be the enrichment 
of the conversation of the group through a common 
interest in more worthy subjects than neighborhood 
gossip, current slang, or personal grievances and whims. 
Another interest in which the family as a whole may 
well be concerned, and which will take them beyond the 
limits of their house walls, is the organized philanthropic 
work of the neighborhood. The group, including even 
the youngest, should recognize this responsibility and 
opportunity, and join in carrying some of the burdens 
and studying some of the problems which our present 
order of society presents with great insistence to all 



ACTIVITIES OF THE HOUSEHOLD 79 

thoughtful persons. This is not only a public duty, but 
one which must be met if the highest welfare of the 
group in its inmost needs is to be attained. The method 
of working it out becomes a problem of no mean order 
in the modern household. 

Similarly every form of social betterment, such as 
organized educational, religious, and civic work, affords 
opportunity for the further training and expression of 
those powers which the modern household should count 
as among its choicest assets, if not, indeed, as the very 
justification for its existence as an institution. 

The suggestions thus briefly outHned cannot be further 
elaborated in this place. The conditions of the problem 
are too diversified to make its solution possible by rule of 
thumb. Indeed, the danger in carrying them out at all 
lies in the direction of making these forms of family ac- 
tivity too mechanical. They are in reality an "outward 
and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," the 
manifestation of those things of the spirit for which 
the physical processes of the household should serve 
as the foundation and starting point. 

Questions 

1. What reasons can you give for not distinguish- 
ing any special human interests as belonging to "the 
higher Hfe"? 

2. What needs come with a larger income? 

3. What class of people find the most difficulty in 
meeting their needs, and why? 

4. How is the satisfaction of such needs to be 
determined ? 



80 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

5. What features of the older home Hfe must be 
retained in order to secure its permanence and vitaHty? 

6. What new features does modern life make 
necessary ? 

7. Describe agencies which can be used in the modern 
well-to-do home for the development of efficiency, char- 
acter, and sense of responsibility in children. Which of 
them are not to be had in hotels and boarding houses? 

8. Specify some ways by which regard both for the 
individuality and for the common interests of the family 
can be served in the organization and administration of 
the household. 

9. What are some of the "communal pleasures" 
which the people of your town enjoy? 

10. What influences and resources can be used in the 
home to check the love of crowd and of communal 
pleasures ? 

11. Why is household life more complex now, with 
all labor-saving appliances, than it formerly was? 

12. What arrangements should be made in money 
matters between the different members of the family? 

13. To what extent does genuine hospitality require 
a modification of the customs of the family? 

14. When the purchase of a ready-made article, such 
as a piece of underclothing, involves more money outlay 
and less expenditure of time than making it at home 
would demand, what plans have you for a satisfactory 
and profitable use of the leisure secured? 

15. Discuss the outside interests which do or should 
have the active interest of the mother. 



activities of the household 8l 

Bibliography 

Democracy and Social Ethics, Chapters II and III. 

Jane Addams. New York: The Macmillan Co. 
Introduction to the Study of Society. Small and Vincent. 

New York: American Book Co. 
Ethics, Chapter XXVI. Dewey and Tufts. New York: 

Henry Holt & Co. 
Household Economics, Chapters I and XII. Helen 

Campbell. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 
Theory of the Leisure Class. T. B. Veblen. New York: 

The Macmillan Co. 
The Education of Women. Marion Talbot. Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press. 
Home Problems from a New Standpoint. C. L. Hunt. 

Boston : Whitcomb & Barrows. 
The Home. C. P. Oilman. New York: Charlton Co. 
Euthenics. E. H. Richards. Boston: Whitcomb & 

Barrows. 
The Cost of Living, Chapter VIII. E. H. Richards. 

New York : John Wiley & Sons. 



A 



CHAPTER X 
THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE COMMUNITY 

FREQUENT mention has been made in the preceding 
pages of activities within the household with which 
the well-being of the community is intertwined. It has 
been pointed out that, from such humble and simple tasks 
as supplying regular food and requiring regular sleep 
for the little children, a reduction in the volume of delin- 
quency, truancy, and subnormality might be expected. 
Similarly, attention has been called to the importance of 
care in the selection of articles of food and clothing, not 
only from the point of view of those who eat and wear, 
but of those who make and sell. The household is, in 
fact, tied to the community by two sets of bonds. There 
are, in the first place, those tasks to be performed by the 
housekeeper on which the well-being of the community 
depends. With proper care of waste-matter in her house 
and the maintenance of a reasonable standard of cleanli- 
ness, the entire community is greatly concerned. Upon 
her living up to a reasonable measure of intelligence in 
the treatment of her children, the entire well-being of the 
next generation may be said to depend. So closely identi- 
fied, in fact, is the public interest with the adequate 
performance of such daily tasks as these, that housekeep- 
ing may now be classified among the public functions. 

But not only is the community dependent upon the 
housekeeper; she is, in turn, dependent upon the com- 
munity for help in the performance of her household 



AND THE COMMUNITY 83 

duties. To be sure, much can be accomplished and must 
be sought through voluntary association. A careful 
housekeeper can keep her own house sweet and clean, 
and can maintain a nice standard of care in her yard; 
but the extent to which her floors will be tracked with 
muddy feet or her curtains soiled by dusty wind will 
depend in large measure on the standard maintained in 
the care of the street in front and the alley behind both 
her own and her neighbors' homes. The organization of 
a neighborhood improvement association may be, then, 
the first and the most practicable step towards securing 
a community standard of cleanliness like her own. 

In the same way, in order to secure conditions which 
she can regard as endurable and suitable for the prepa- 
ration of such of her food as under modern city condi- 
tions should not be prepared at home, she may accomplish 
something by individual care. She can look at her 
butcher's refrigerator, go through her grocer's store- 
room, visit her milkman's dairy, and inspect his wagon. 
Moreover, she can organize a Consumers' League, whose 
members will agree with her to ask information before 
they buy and to maintain representatives to inspect for 
them all and to voice their demands. Obviously, how- 
ever, the local improvement association is but a step 
towards securing at least a reasonable standard of street 
and alley care for the whole city. To secure this it is 
necessary to exercise control over the public works de- 
partment and to influence the determination of the pro- 
portion of the city's resources which should be spent on 
this aspect of city comfort and well-being. 

Moreover, in connection with many processes neces- 



84 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

sary to the preparation of food, the private group is as 
helpless as the private individual. Whether the beef shall 
be adequately inspected before slaughtering, whether the 
meat products shall be carefully handled, whether the em- 
ployees in distant mills and workshops are sweated or 
exploited or exposed to needless accident and to prevent- 
able disease, neither the individual nor the woman's club 
can effectively determine. Nothing short of govern- 
mental power, expressed in legislation and executed 
through governmental agents, will meet the exigencies 
of the situation. Spending for food and clothing and 
other means of satisfaction involves, then, a partnership 
with the whole industrial machinery by which they are 
supplied, and a partnership with the governmental organ- 
ization by which the industrial machine must be con- 
trolled. "The woman's place is in the home," is an old 
saying to which all subscribe, perhaps with varying 
appreciation of its significance. To some it means that 
women must limit themselves to the performance of 
duties arising within the walls where the members of the 
family sleep, whence they go to their daily interests. To 
others it means that wherever there is found an interest 
vital to the well-being of the group for which she is 
responsible, the housekeeper will feel entitled to claim 
admittance. 

To those who take this larger view, it becomes in- 
evitable that the housekeeper shall be present either 
in her own person or in the person of her agent where 
the food of her family is prepared. She must inspect 
the farm from which her milk is brought to the city, the 
dairy in which it is prepared, the trains on which it is 



AND THE COMMUNITY 85 

transported, the centres from which it is distributed. 
She must take part in the decision as to the standard 
required, the method of enforcement devised, the rate 
at which that standard shall be raised. 

She must properly separate the waste matter in her 
own home and dispose of it in accordance with her own 
standards of cleanliness and with the orders from the 
City Health or Public Works Department. She must 
also cooperate in securing adequate provision for the 
disposition of that waste which must be collectively 
handled. 

She will insist on following her children into the 
school, on to the playgrounds, into all places of amuse- 
ment. She will claim the right to be present when the 
"guardians of the law and of the children who go about 
in public places" are selected and instructed, because 
they are her servants doing her work. With amazing 
complacency women have let their homes outgrow them. 
They have allowed their children to go unattended and 
unguarded and so substantially orphaned into many 
places and through many experiences. The girl who is 
motherless, not because her mother is dead, but because 
she has let her home outgrow her, is unguarded in the 
dance hall or place of cheap amusement. The boy, 
orphaned similarly, finds his way to the Juvenile Court. 
The streets which she has neglected are lined with 
ugly and deceptive billboards. Into the city which 
she has failed to claim come strangers treated as she 
would not let a dog be treated in her own back yard. 
She talks much of the difficulties attending her efforts 
to secure a maid who shall open the door and take in 



86 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

the milk ; but she has paid no attention to the selection 
of the man at the head of the Health or Public Works 
or Pure Food Department., whose duties are of as 
immediate and urgent concern to her. Perhaps she de- 
serves to be treated as the servant in the parable was 
treated, and be made to deliver up to another the talent 
intrusted to her for wise investment. But to whom 
would the better handling of the talent be intrusted? 
No such solution of this difficulty is possible, for there 
is at hand no servant who has been faithful with the 
ten talents. Her sins have been those of omission, and 
have been largely due to the fact that her eyes have 
been hidden so that she has not seen the way in which 
the boundaries of the home which she thought her pres- 
ence filled had shifted, leaving her stranded in the centre 
of a wide and ever- widening reach of human problems 
and human needs. When she sees how her presence is 
needed in all the places which have been named, she 
'Svill arise and go" to the polling booth, to the city 
hall, to the factory, to the school that the child's mental 
training may not be divorced from his physical and 
social needs, to the place where the children play so that 
safety and therefore decency may characterize the rela- 
tionship of boys and girls, to all the places where those 
who prepare and serve her food and make her clothing 
work and live. 

She will appropriate the ballot as a domestic neces- 
sity, just as she appropriates the mechanical devices 
which lighten her work and render her physical efforts 
more effective. She will utilize governmental organiza- 
tion as she will resort to private organization, according 



AND THE COMMUNITY 8/ 

as one or the other serves the interests intrusted to her 
care. She will scan the records of public servants 
because of the domestic interests involved in their selec- 
tion, and gradually she will apply to the selection of 
her private helpers professional rather than personal 
standards which will dignify their labor and her relation- 
ship to them. Her position will then become one of 
increasing dignity and interest, and from her trained 
intelligence will come many suggestions for better col- 
lective action in behalf of the children, the aged, the 
sick, for whose care the community must be responsible. 
All of this will grow out of her realization that a woman's 
presence is demanded throughout the range of interests 
which constitute her home. 

The question arises as to the best method of prepara- 
tion for such a profession as has been described. Obvi- 
ously many are being allowed to undertake these respon- 
sibilities without adequate equipment, indeed without any 
equipment at all. Clearly no training which enlarges the 
sympathy and widens the sense of kinship with all man- 
kind will be amiss. All the helps to be got from Htera- 
ture and history in making the past live, in making the 
ways of others interesting for her own group, will be 
useful, if the home is to compete in attractiveness with 
the excitement of the moving picture show or the allure- 
ments of the street. Bacteriology, chemistry, and physics 
should be her handmaids in the performance of house- 
hold tasks. Economics and the theory of government 
she should command. With the technique of simple 
cooking, of simple sewing, of simple cleansing both of 
house and of garments she should be familiar. The 



88 THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD 

theory of modern advertising and of modern methods of 
selHng should be made known to her, so that she may 
not be victimized by them. Perhaps the most important 
preparation of all is the attainment of a fine democracy 
of spirit which dignifies work, judges by objective stand- 
ards, and leaves to others, children, maid-servants, any 
who cooperate either in public or private undertakings, 
a large measure of freedom from interference and petty 
criticism, creating an atmosphere of kindness and of 
genuine equality. In such an atmosphere children will 
thrive, maid-servants will respond, tasks will be smoothly 
done, and life will move serene in the sphere over which 
she has undertaken to rule and in which she has been 
glad to serve. 

Questions 

1. In what respects, if any, do you think that the 
administration of the household offers "a career" to 
women ? 

2. What kinds of training and knowledge do you 
think the head of a household needs? 

3. On what public agencies is your household now 
dependent for its well-being? 

4. With what voluntary associations can you ally 
yourself to secure better housekeeping for your neigh- 
borhood ? 

5. Summarize the different ways by which a house- 
keeper can combine her household duties with the edu- 
cation of her children. How can she make use of one 
to accomplish the other? 

6. Can you justify from your own experience the 



•Adapled from 

fine posler oP 

The Woman's 

CiTy Club 

Cnicaqo. 




Madam, 

Who Keeps Your House? 



AND THE COMMUNITY 89 

statement that it is possible to be victimized by advertise- 
ments ? 

7. What do you think are the most pressing reforms 
needed today in the administration of the household? 

8. What agencies can be devised and used to bring 
them about? 

Bibliography 

Newer Ideals of Peace, Chapter VII. Jane Addams. 

New York: The Macmillan Co. 
The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. Jane Addams. 

New York: The Macmillan Co. 
Democracy and Social Ethics, Chapter III. Jane Addams. 

New York: The Macmillan Co. 
A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. Jane Addams. 

New York: The Macmillan Co. 
Some Ethical Gains through Legislation. Florence 

Kelley. New York: The Macmillan Co. 
The Family. Helen Bosanquet. New York: The Mac- 
millan Co. 
Ethics, Chapter XXVI. John Dewey and James H. 

Tufts. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 
The Education of Women. Marion Talbot. Chicago: 

The University of Chicago Press. 
Civics and Health. William H. Allen. Boston: Ginn 

& Co. 
Euthenics. Ellen H. Richards. Boston: Whitcomb & 

Barrows. 
The City the Hope of Democracy. Frederick C. Howe. 

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 



INDEX 



Accounts, household, 12, 51, 76 
Advantages of domestic em- 
ployee, 60 
Advertising, 88 
Esthetic faculties, development 

of, 76, 77 
After-Care Committee, 42 
Amusement, places of, 77, 85 
Appliances, mechanical, 49 
Archaic methods, 3 
Atmosphere of home, 88 

Ballot, a domestic necessity, 86 

Belated habits, 3 

Business, relation of house- 
keeper to, 6 

Buying clothing, difficulties in, 
38, 41. 42 

Buying clothing, stimulation of, 
38 

Buying, influences of, 5 

Buying, preparation for, 6 

Care of streets, 83 
Causes of disease, 24 
Chapin, 39 

Charity Organization Move- 
ment, 2 
Chicago Board of Education, 6 
Child, chief asset of home, 70 
Child Labor Committee, 42 
Choice of standard of living, 12 
Cleanliness of clothing, 40 
Clothing, 37 et scq. 

cleanliness of, 40 

difficulties in buying, 38, 41, 
42 

durability of, 40 

home making of, 42 

manufacture of, 41, 42 

purposes of, Z7, 38 

sanitary aspects of, 40, 41 

selection of, 2>7^ 43 

standards in, 39 

styles in, 38, 39 

sweatshop, 41, 42 



Coffee, 34 

Coloring matter in foods, 33 

Common interests of maker and 

buyer, 6 
Communal pleasures, 77, 78 
Community dependent on house- 
keeper, 82 
housekeeper dependent on, 

82, 83 
interference, 2 
Complexity in feeding, ^2 
Conditions of household labor, 

50 
Considerations in choice of 

home, 25 
Consumers' League, 42, 83 
Consumption, wasteful methods 

in, 1 1 
Control of food, 83, 84, 85 
of home, 86 

of householder by state, 21 
of public servants, 87 
of public works, 83, 86 
Cooperation, training in, 68 
Criticisms of family, i 

Danger of overeating, 32 
Decline of preserve-making, 31 
Dependency, 2 

Development of aesthetic facul- 
ties, 76, 77 

of individuality, 69 
Dietetic considerations, 30 

standards, 30 
Disappearance of household in- 
dustries, I, 4, 5, 16, 29 
Disease, causes of, 24 

resistance to, 24 
Disposal of waste, 85 
Distribution of resources, 13, 16 
Domestic appliances for educa- 
tion, 67, 68 

efforts, fruitage of, 75 

employee, advantages of, 60 
working conditions of, 60 

ideals, 3 



90 



INDEX 



91 



Domestic industries, disappear- 
ance of, I, 4, 5, 16, 29 
retention of, 6, 75 
necessity, ballot a, 86 
problem, seriousness of, 3 
service, 56 et seq. 

legal peculiarities in, 58, 

59 
servants, training of, 63, 64 
Durability of clothing, 40 

Economic status of family 

groups, 2 
Education, 67 et seq. 

a domestic industry, 67 
domestic appliances for, 68 
for home-making, 20 
Efficiency, standards of, 2 
Elaboration of household proc- 
esses, 48, 49 
Elimination of service, 56, 57 
Emergencies, household, 50 
Emerson, R. W., 74 
Enactments, sanitary, 24 
Engel, Ernest, 14 
Engel's Laws, 14 
Environment, effect of on 

health, 24 
Ethical training, 71 
Evidences of dissatisfaction, i 
Expenditures, experiments in 
household, 15 

Factory system, 3 

Failure of institutional lite, 7 

Family accounts, 76 

as a social organization, i 
criticisms of, i 
groups, economic status of, 2 
life among the poor, i 

importance of sound, i 
rehabilitation, 2 
Feeding, complexity in, 32 
new questions in, 29, 30 
self-indulgence in, 32 
principles of, 30 
Food, control of, 83, 84, 85 
handling of, 34 
laws, 33 

preservatives, 33 
substitutes, 33 



Food, wholesale buying of, 34 
Foods, coloring matter in, 33 

in season, 31 

nutritive value of, 31 

prepared, 32, 33. 35 

predigested, 34 
Forethought, use of, 50 
Fruitage of domestic efforts, 75 
Fruits, use of, 31 
Function of house, 74 

of making, 6 

of spending, 6 

Glucose, ZZ 

Governmental organization, use 

of, 86 
Group training, 81 

Habits, belated, 3 

Handling of food, 34 

Health, effect of environment 
on, 24 

Hereditary tendencies, 71 

Higher life, 75 

Home, atmosphere of, 88 
centre of production, 11 
child, chief asset of, 70 
considerations in choice of, 

25 
control of, 86 
education, 67, 68 
woman's sphere, 84, 88 
making, 20 

education for, 20 
of clothing, 42 
Homes, women outgrown by, 85, 

86 
House, function of, 74 
Householder, control of, by state, 
21 
legal relations of, 22 
obligations of, to community, 

23 . , 

Housekeeper, community de- 
pendent on, 82 
dependent on community, 82, 

83 
position of, 17. 40 
relation of, to business, 6 
responsibility of, 8 



92 



INDEX 



Housekeeping, 20 

a public function, 82 

training for, 87 
Household accounts, 12, 51, 76 

emergencies, 50 

life, importance of, 6 

manager, qualities of, 48 

object of, 47 

processes, elaboration of, 48, 

49 
tasks, 56 
welfare of, 49 
Housework, standardization of, 

60, 61, 62, 63 
Housing, 20 

sanitary considerations in, 24 
Hospitality, 75, 76 

Ideals, domestic, 3 

twentieth century, 3 
Importance of family life, i, 6 
Individuality, development of, 

69 
Industries, disappearance of do- 
mestic, I, 4, 5, 16, 29 

retention of domestic, 6, 75 
Influence of buying, 5 
Investments, 51, 52 
Institutional life, failure of, 7 

Juvenile Court, 2, 7, 85 
Juvenile Protective Association, 
42 

Labor Legislation Association, 42 
conditions of household, 50 

Language, training in, 69 

Laws, Engel's, 14 

Legal Aid Society, 59 

relations of householder, 22 
peculiarities in domestic serv- 
ice, 58, 59 

LePlay, 14 

Limitation of householder's 
rights, 21 

Living in system, 61 
objections to, 61, 62 

Maid, social inferiority of, 58 
Maker and buyer, common in- 
terests of, 6 



Making, function of, 6 

provision for wants by, 5 
spending substitute for, 5 
Management, scientific, 47, 48 
Manners, training in, 69 
Manufacture of clothing, 41, 42 
Mechanical appliances, 49 
Methods, archaic, 3 
Mistress and maid, relationship 

of, 57, 58 
Money, use of, 51 
More, 39 

Needs, supply of, 13 
Neglected streets, 85 
Neighborhood improvement as- 
sociation, 83 
Nutritive value of foods, 31 

Object of household, 47 
Obligations of householder to 

community, 23 
Organization of personal serv- 
ice, 62, 63 
Overeating, danger of, 32 
Owning versus renting, 25 

Pensions, 2 

Personal service, organization 

of, 62, 63 
Philanthropic activities, 78 
Physical processes, significance 

of, 74 
training, 70, 71 
Places of amusement, 77, 85 
Placing out, 2 

Planning for spending, 12, 13 
Playgrounds, 85 
Poor, family life among the, i 
Position of housekeeper, 4, 17 
Power in spending, 5 
Predigested foods, 34 
Preparation for buying, 6 
Prepared foods, 32, 33, 35 
Preserve-making, decline of, 31 
Principles of feeding, 30 
Problem, domestic, seriousness 

of, 3 
Production, home centre of, 11 
Provision for future, 51, 52 
for wants by making, 5 



INDEX 



93 



Public function, housekeeping a, 
82 
servants, control of, 87 
works, control of, 83, 86 

Purposes of clothing, 37, 38 

Relation of housekeeper to busi- 
ness, 6 
Relationship of mistress and 

maid, 57, 58 
Religious activities, ^J^ 

Education Association, tj 
Renting, owning versus, 25 
Resistance to disease, 24 
Responsibility, training in, 70 
Retention of domestic indus- 
tries, 6, 75 
Resources, distribution of, 13,16 
Responsibility of housekeeper, 8 
Rights, limitation of house- 
holder's, 21 
Rowntree, 39 

Sanitary aspects of clothing, 40, 
41 

considerations in housing, 24 

enactments, 24 
Sanitation, tendencies in, 23 
School, a household interest, 67 
Scientific management, 47, 48 
Self-indulgence in feeding, 32 
Selection of clothing, 37, 43 
Service, elimination of, 56, 57 

within the home, 57 
Sex instruction, 71 
Significance of physical proc- 
esses, 74, 79 
Social inferiority of maid, 58 

problems, study of, 78, 79 

organization, family as, i 
Spenders, women as, of family 

income, 10 
Spending, function of, 6 

planning for, 12 

power in, 5 

substitute for making, 5 
Standard of living, choice of, 12 
Standards in clothing, 39 

of efficiency, 2 
Standardization of housework, 
60, 61, 62, 63 



State, control of householder 

by, 21 
State control, study of, 22 
Stimulation of buying clothing, 

38 
Streets, care of, 83 

neglected, 85 
Study of social problems, 78 

of state control, 22 
Styles in clothing, 38, 39 
Supply of needs, 13 
Sweatshop clothing, 41, 42 

Tasks, household, 56 
Tendencies, hereditary, 71 

in sanitation, 23 
Textile laws, 39 
Training, ethical, 71 

for housekeeping, 87 

group, 71 

in cooperation, 68 

in language, 69 

in manners, 69 

in responsibility, 70 

of domestic servants, 63, 64 

physical, 70, 71 
Twentieth century ideals, 3 

Use of governmental organiza- 
tion, 86 
of forethought, 50 
of fruits, 31 
of money, 51 

Wage-earning, 4 

Wage-paid woman, 4 

Waste, disposal of, 85 

Wasteful methods in consump- 
tion, II 

Welfare of household, 49 

Wholesale buying of food, 34 

Woman, wage-paid. 4 

Woman's sphere, the home, 84, 
88 

Women as spenders of family 
income, 10 

Women outgrown by homes, 85, 
86 

Working conditions of em- 
ployee. 60 



